The Lady of Fort St. John | Page 2

head. Some of the men were already asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one of the men came from the inner room.
"Good-night, madame," she said.
"Good-night, Z��lie," answered a voice within.
"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"
"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for our voyage home."
The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.
This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.
Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair, which Z��lie had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.
"How soon, monsieur," she asked, "can you return to Fort St. John?"
"With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."
"Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you."
"Yet he will scarce do it."
"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push him as he now pushes you."
"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."
"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy hath been to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and you. Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the king to declare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw their hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as allies; we have only gone down in the world."
La Tour stirred uneasily.
"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."
"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie, checking a laugh.
La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province of Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the Island of Sable, and from the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in grants: the north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de Charnisay; and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de la Tour. Being Protestant in faith, La Tour had no influence at the court of Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He had held it against treason to France; and his loyal service, at least, was regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in that year of grace 1645, before Acadia was diked by home-making Norman peasants or watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun to trample it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the New World.
"All things failing me"--La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them with a sharp smile.
"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you before he can carry you in chains to France."
She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning to them for the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth on a trembling lip.
"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are young, and I give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of jewels and merry company."
"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And