The Lady of Fort St. John | Page 3

you know I seldom now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is buried in the ground."
She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had called "my little lord."
"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour. "He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his inheritance stripped from him."
They were silent until Marie said, "You have a long march before you to-morrow, monsieur."
"Yes; we ought to throw ourselves into these mangers," said La Tour.
One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the lower row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.
"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should have made this journey entirely by sea."
"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice. Nicholas Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded. My lieutenant in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over her, "my equal partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will stand for my honor and prosperity until I return."
Marie smiled back.
"D'Aulnay has a fair wife, and her husband is rich, and favored by the king, and has got himself made governor of Acadia in your stead. She sits in her own hall at Port Royal: but poor Madame D'Aulnay! She has not thee!"
At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely a voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of bunks. Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's voice.
"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.
"Monsieur, it must be a baby!"
"Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men concealed overhead."
He grasped his pistols, but no men-at-arms appeared with the haggard woman who crept down from her hiding-place near the joists.
"Are you some spy sent from D'Aulnay?" inquired La Tour.
"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered Marie.
The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer appeared with men at his back.
"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"
"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be more in the loft above."
Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead. A light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the baby. Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and carried it to the hearth.
"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.
She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.
"Will you give no account of yourself?"
"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her cares with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees, watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only vex a soldier.
"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.
"And Z��lie must look to her comfort," added Marie.
"Whoever she may be," declared La Tour, "she hath heard too much to go free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and guarded there."
"What else could be done, indeed?" asked Marie. "The child would die of exposure here."
The prisoner was taken to the other hearth; and the young officer, as he closed the door, half smiled to hear his lady murmur over the wretched little outcast, as she always murmured to ailing creatures,--
"Let mother help you."

I.
AN ACADIAN FORTRESS.
At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and tide-terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy, subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on the visible world. The forest on the west