"Aye, the Chevalier de St. Luc is head of one of the greatest families of France and you're his next of kin."

"And so I'm half a Frenchman!"

"Aye, half a Frenchman, half an Englishman, and all an American."

"And so I am!" said Robert.

"Truly it is a great morning," said Tayoga gravely. "Tododaho has given to me the triumph, and Tandakora has gone to his hereafter, wherever it may be; the soul of Garay is sped too, France has lost Canada, and Dagaeoga has found the brother of his mother."

"It's true," said Willet in a whimsical tone. "When things begin to happen they happen fast. The battle is almost over."

But the victorious army, as it advanced, was subjected to a severe fire on the flank from ambushed Canadians. Many of the French threw themselves into the thickets on the Coté Ste.-Genevieve, and poured a hail of bullets into the ranks of the advancing Highlanders. Vaudreuil came up from Beauport and was all in terror, but Bougainville and others, arriving, showed a firmer spirit. The gates of Quebec were shut, and it seemed to show defiance, while the English and Americans, still in the presence of forces greater than their own, intrenched on the field where they had won the victory, a victory that remains one of the decisive battles of the world, mighty and far-reaching in its consequences.

A night of mixed triumph and grief came, grief for the loss of Wolfe and so many brave men, triumph that a daring chance had brought such a brilliant success. Robert found Charteris, Grosvenor, Colden and the Virginians unharmed. Wilton was wounded severely, but ultimately recovered his full strength. Carson was wounded also, but was as well as ever in a month, while Robert himself, Tayoga, Willet and Zeb Crane were not touched.

But his greatest interest that night was in the Chevalier de St. Luc, Marquis de Clermont. They had made him a pallet in a tent and one of the best army surgeons was attending so famous and gallant an enemy. But he seemed easiest when Robert was by.

"My boy," he said, "I always tried to save you. Whenever I looked upon you I saw in your face my sister Gabrielle."

"But why did you not tell me?" asked Robert. "Why did not some one of the others who seemed to know tell me?"

"There were excellent reasons," replied the wounded man. "Gabrielle loved one of the Bostonnais, a young man whom she met in Paris. He was brave, gallant and true, was your father, Richard Lennox. I have nothing to say against him, but our family did not consider it wise for her to marry a foreigner, a member of another race. They eloped and were married in a little hamlet on the wild coast of Brittany. Then they fled to America, where you were born, and when you were a year old they undertook to return to France, seeking forgiveness. But it was only a start. The ship was driven on the rocks of Maine and they were lost, your brave, handsome father and my beautiful sister—but you were saved. Willet came and took you into the wilderness with him. He has stood in the place of your own father."

"But why did not they tell me?" repeated Robert. "Why was I left so long in ignorance?"

"There was a flaw. The priest who performed the marriage was dead. The records were lost. The evil said there had been no marriage, and that you were no rightful member of the great family of De Clermont. We could not prove the marriage then and so you were left for the time with Willet."

"Why did Willet take me?"

Raymond Louis de St. Luc turned to Willet, who sat on the other side of the pallet, and smiled.

"I will answer you, Robert," said the hunter. "I was one of those who loved your mother. How could any one help loving her? As beautiful as a dream, and a soul of pure gold. She married another, but when she was lost at sea something went out of my life that could never be replaced in this world. You have replaced it partly, Robert, but not wholly. It seemed fitting to the others that, being what I was, and loving Gabrielle de Clermont as I had, I should take you. I should have taken you anyhow."

Robert's head swam, and there was a mist before his eyes. He was thinking of the beautiful young mother whom he could not remember.

"Then I am by blood a De Clermont, and yet not a De Clermont," he said.

"You're a De Clermont by blood, by right, and before all the world," said Willet. "I've a letter from Benjamin Hardy in New York, stating that the records have been found in the ruins of the burned church on the coast of Brittany, where the marriage was performed. Their authenticity has been acknowledged by the French government and all the members of the De Clermont family who are in France. Copies of them have been smuggled through from France."

"Thanks to the good God!" murmured St. Luc.

"And Adrian Van Zoon? Why has he made such war against me?" asked Robert.

"Because of money," replied Willet. "Your father was a great owner of shipping, inherited, as Richard Lennox was a young man under thirty when he was lost at sea. At his death the control of it passed into the hands of his father's partner, Adrian Van Zoon. Van Zoon wanted it all, and, since you had no relatives, he probably would have secured it if you had been put out of the way. That is why you were safer with me at Albany and in the woods, until your rightful claims could be established. Benjamin Hardy, who had been a schoolmate and great friend of your father, knew of this and kept watch on Van Zoon. Your estate has not suffered in the man's hands, because, expecting it to be his own, he has made it increase. Jonathan Pillsbury knew your history too. So did Jacobus Huysman, in whose house we placed you when you went to school, and so did your teacher, Master Alexander McLean."

"I had powerful friends. I felt it all the time," said Robert.

"So you had, lad, and it was largely because they saw you grow up worthy of such friendship. You're a very rich man, Robert. There are ships belonging to you on nearly every sea, or at least there would be if we had no war."

"And a Marquis of France—when I die," said St. Luc.

"No! No!" exclaimed Robert. "You'll live as long as I will! Why, you're only a young man!"

"Twenty-nine," said St. Luc. "Gabrielle was twelve years older than I am. You are more a younger brother than a nephew to me, Robert."

"But I will never become a Marquis of France," said Robert. "I am American, English to the core. I have fought against France, though I do not hate her. I cannot go to France, nor even to England. I must stay in the country in which I was born, and in which my father was born."

"Spoken well," said Willet. "It was what I wanted to hear you say. The Chevalier will return to France. He will marry and have children of his own. Haven't we heard him sing often about the girl he left on the bridge of Avignon? The next Marquis of Clermont will be his son and not his nephew."

Which came to pass, as Willet predicted.

Robert stayed long that night by the pallet of his uncle, to whom the English gave the best of attention, respecting the worth of a wounded prisoner so well known for his bravery, skill and lofty character. St. Luc finally fell asleep, and, going outside, Robert found Tayoga awaiting him. When he told him all the strange and wonderful story that he had heard inside the tent, the Onondaga said:

"I suppose that Dagaeoga, being a great man, will go to Europe and forget us here."

"Never!" exclaimed Robert. "My home is in America. All I know is America, and I'd be out of place in any other country."

And then he added whimsically:

"I couldn't go so far away from the Hodenosaunee."

"Dagaeoga might go far and yet never come to a nation greater than the great League," said Tayoga, with deep conviction.

"That's true, Tayoga. How stands the battle? I had almost forgotten it in the amazing tide of my own fortunes."

"General Wolfe is dead, but his spirit lives after him. We are victorious at all points. The French have fled into Quebec, and they yet have an army much more numerous than ours, if they get it all together. But Montcalm was wounded and they say he is dying. The soul has gone out of them. I think Quebec will be yielded very soon."

And surrendered it was a few days later, but the victors soon found that the city they had won with so much daring would have to be defended with the utmost courage and pertinacity. St. Luc, fast recovering from his wound, was sent a prisoner to New York, together with De Galissonnière, who had been taken unhurt, but Robert did not get away as soon as he had expected. Quebec was in peril again, but now from the French. De Levis, who succeeded Montcalm as the military leader of New France, gathering together at Montreal all the fragments of the French power in Canada, swore to retake Quebec.

Robert, Tayoga and Willet, with the rangers, served in the garrison of Quebec throughout the long and bitter winter that followed. In the spring they moved out with the army to meet De Levis, who was advancing from Montreal to keep his oath. Robert received a slight wound in the battle of Ste. Foy that followed, in which the English and Americans were defeated, and were compelled to retreat into Quebec.

This battle of Ste. Foy, in which Robert distinguished himself again with the New England rangers, was long and fierce, one of the most sanguinary ever fought on Canadian soil. De Levis, the French commander, showed all the courage and skill of Montcalm, proving himself a worthy successor to the leader who had fallen with Wolfe, and his men displayed the usual French fire and courage.

Hazen, the chief of the rangers, was badly wounded in the height of the action, but Robert and Willet succeeded in bringing him off the field, while Tayoga protected their retreat. A bullet from the Onondaga's rifle here slew Colonel de Courcelles, and Robert, on the whole, was glad that the man's death had been a valiant one. He had learned not to cherish rancor against any one, and the Onondaga and the hunter agreed with him.

"There is some good in everybody," said Willet. "We'll remember that and forget the rest."

But Robert's friends in the Royal Americans had a hard time of it in the battle of Ste. Foy, even harder than in Wolfe's battle on the Plains of Abraham. They were conspicuous for their valor and suffered many casualties. Colden, Cabell and Stuart were wounded, but took no permanent hurt. Charteris also received a slight wound, but he recovered entirely before his marriage in the summer with the lovely Louise de St. Maur, the daughter of the Seigneur Raymond de St. Maur, in whose house he had been a prisoner a long time in Quebec.

It was Robert's own personal contact and his great friendship for Charteris, continuing throughout their long lives in New York, that caused him to take such a strong and permanent interest in this particular regiment which had been raised wholly in the colonies and which fought so valiantly at Duquesne, Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, Quebec, Ste. Foy, and in truth in nearly all the great North American battles of the Seven Years' War.

It was at first the Sixty-Second Regular Regiment of the British Army, "Royal American Provincials," but through the lapsing of two other regiments it soon became the Sixtieth. Its valor and distinction were so high when composed wholly of Americans, except the superior officers, that nearly seventy years subsequent to the fall of Quebec the Englishmen, who after the great quarrel had replaced the Americans in it, asked that they be allowed to use as their motto the Latin phrase, Celer et audax, "Swift and Bold," "Quick and Ready," which Wolfe himself was said to have conferred upon it shortly before his fall upon the Plains of Abraham. And in memory of the great deeds of their American predecessors, the gallant Englishmen who succeeded them were permitted by the British government to use that motto.

Despite their defeat at Ste. Foy, the English and Americans held the capital against De Levis until another British fleet arrived and compelled the retreat of the brave Frenchmen. More reënforcements came from England, the powerful army of Amherst advanced from the south, Montreal was taken, and it was soon all over with New France.

Canada passed to England, and after its fall English and American troops, men of the same blood, language and institutions, did not stand together again in a great battle for more than a century and a half, and then, strangely enough, it was in defense of that France which under one flag they had fought at Duquesne and Ticonderoga, at Quebec and Ste. Foy.

Robert, Tayoga and Willet went back to the colonies by land, and after a long journey stopped at Albany, where they received the warmest of welcomes from Master Jacobus Huysman, Master Alexander McLean and Caterina.

"I knew Robert that some time you would come into your own. I hold some of the papers about you in my great chest here," said Jacobus Huysman. "Now it iss for you to show that you understand how to use great fortune well."

"And never forget your dates," said Master Alexander. "It is well to know history. All the more so, because you have had a part in the making of it."

Warm as was their welcome in Albany, it was no warmer than that given them in New York by Benjamin Hardy and Jonathan Pillsbury. The very next day they went to the house of Adrian Van Zoon for a reckoning, only to find him dead in his bed. He had heard the night before of Robert's arrival; in truth, it was his first intimation that young Lennox was alive, and that all his wicked schemes against him had failed.

"It may have been a stroke of heart disease," said Benjamin Hardy, as they turned away, "or——"

"He has gone and his crimes have gone with him," said Robert. "I don't wish ever to know how he went."

A little later the Chevalier Raymond Louis de St. Luc, Marquis de Clermont, the war now being over, sailed with his faithful Canadian attendant, Dubois, from New York for France. The parting between him and his nephew was not demonstrative, but it was marked by the deepest affection on either side.

"France has been defeated, but she is the eternal nation," said St. Luc. "She will be greater than ever. She will be more splendid than before."

The De Clermonts were a powerful stock, with their roots deep in the soil. A son of St. Luc's became a famous general under Napoleon, a great cavalry leader of singular courage and capacity, and a lineal descendant of his, a general also, fought with the same courage and ability under Joffre and Foch in the World War, being especially conspicuous for his services at both the First and Second Marne. At the Second Marne he gave a heartfelt greeting to two young American officers named Lennox, calling them his cousins and brothers-in-arms, in blood as well as in spirit. They were together in the immortal counter-stroke on the morning of July 18, 1918, when Americans and French turned the tide of the World War, and sealed anew an old friendship. They were also together throughout those blazing one hundred and nineteen days when British, French and Americans together, old enemies and old friends who had mingled their blood on innumerable battle-fields, destroyed the greatest menace of modern times and hurled the pretender to divine honors from his throne.

Robert found his fortune to be one of the largest in the New World, but he kept it in the hands of Benjamin Hardy and David Willet, who increased it, and he became the lawyer, orator and statesman for which his talents fitted him so eminently. A marked characteristic in the life of Robert Lennox, noted by all who knew him, was his liberality of opinion. He had his share in public life, but the bitterness of politics, then so common in this country as well as others, seemed never to touch him. He was always willing to give his opponent credit for sincerity, and even to admit that his cause had justice. In his opinion the other man's point of view could always be considered.

This broadness of mind often caused him to incur criticism, but it had become so much his nature, and his courage was so great, that he would not depart from it. He had been through the terrible war with the French, and, even before he knew that he was half a Frenchman by blood, he had gladly acknowledged the splendid qualities of the French, their bravery and patience, and their logical minds. He always said during the worst throes of their revolution that the French would emerge from it greater than ever.

His position was similar in the Revolutionary War with the English. While he cast in his lot with his own people, and suffered with them, he invariably maintained that the English nation was sound at the core. He had fought beside them in a great struggle and he knew how strong and true they were, and when our own strife was over he was most eager for a renewal of good relations with the English, always saying that the fact that they had quarreled and parted did not keep them from being of the same blood and family, and hence natural allies.

He consistently refused to hate an individual. He always insisted that life was too busy to cherish a grudge or seek revenge. Bad acts invariably punished themselves in the course of time. He was able to see some good, a little at least, in everybody. Searching his mind in after years, he could even find excuses for Adrian Van Zoon. He would say to Willet that the man loved nothing but money, that perhaps he had been born that way and could not help it, that he had made his attempts upon him under the influence of what was the greatest of all temptations to him, and that while he paid the slaver to carry him away he had not paid him to kill him. As for Garay, he would say that he might have exceeded orders. He would say the same about the shots the slaver had fired at him at Albany.

This tolerance came partly from his own character, and partly from an enormous experience of life in the raw in his young and formative years. He knew how men were to a large extent the creatures of circumstances, and on the individual in particular his judgments were always mild. He had two favorite sayings:

"No man is as bad as he seems to his worst enemy."

"No man is as good as he seems to his best friend."

His own faults he knew perfectly well to be quickness of temper and a proneness to hasty action. Throughout his life he fought against them and he took as his models Willet and Tayoga, who always appeared to him to have a more thorough command over their own minds and impulses than any other men he ever knew.

Aside from his brilliancy and power in public life, Lennox had other qualities that distinguished him as a man. He was noted for his cosmopolitan views concerning human affairs. He had an uncommon largeness and breadth of vision, all the more notable then, as America was, in many respects, outside the greater world of Europe. People in speaking of him, however, recalled the extraordinary variety and intensity of his experiences. Much of his story was known and it was not diminished in the telling. He was always at home in the woods. He had an uncommon sympathy for hunters, borderers, pathfinders and all kinds of wilderness rovers. He understood them and they instinctively understood him, invariably finding in him a redoubtable champion. He was also closely in touch with the Indian soul, and his friends used to say laughingly that he had something of the Indian in his own nature. At all events, the Great League of the Hodenosaunee found in him a defender and he was more than once an honored guest in the Vale of Onondaga.

On the other hand, his interest in European affairs was always keen and intelligent, especially in those of England and France, with whose sons he had come into contact so much during the great war. He maintained a lifelong correspondence with his friend, Alfred Grosvenor, who ultimately became a nobleman and who sat for more than forty years in the House of Lords. Lennox visited him several times in England, both before and after the quarrel between the colonies and the mother country, which, however, did not diminish their friendship a particle. In truth, during those troubled times Grosvenor, who was noted for the liberality of his sentiments and for an affection for Americans, conceived during his service as a soldier on their continent in the Seven Years' War, often defended them against the criticism of his countrymen, while Lennox, on his side, very boldly told the people that nothing could alter the fact that England was their mother country, and that no one should even wish to alter it.

But his correspondence with his uncle, Raymond Louis de St. Luc, Marquis de Clermont, not so many years older than himself, covered a period of nearly sixty years filled with world-shaking events, and, though it has been printed for private circulation only, it is a perfect mine of fact, comment and illumination. St. Luc was one of the few French noblemen to foresee the great Revolution in his country, and, while he mourned its excesses, he knew that much of it was justified. His patriotism and courage were so high and so obvious that neither Danton, Marat nor Robespierre dared to attack him. As an old man he supported Napoleon ardently until the empire and the ambitions of the emperor became too swollen, and, while he mourned Waterloo, he told his son, General Robert Lennox de St. Luc, who distinguished himself so greatly there and who almost took the château of Hougoumont from the English, that it was for the best, and that it was inevitable. It was the comment of St. Luc, then eighty-five years old and full of experience and wisdom, that a very great man may become too great.

Lennox was noted for his great geniality and his extraordinary capacity for making friends. Yet there was a strain of remarkable gravity, even austerity, in his character. There came times when he wished to be alone, to hear no human voices about him. It was then perhaps that he thought his best thoughts and took, too, his best resolutions. In the great silences he seemed to see more clearly, and the path lay straight before him. Many of his friends thought it an eccentricity, but he knew it was an inheritance from his long stay alone upon the island, a period in his life that had so much effect in molding his character.

It was this ripeness of mind, based upon fullness of information and deep meditation, that made him such a great man in the true sense of the word. As a speaker he was without a rival either in form or substance in the New World. It was said everywhere in New York that the famous Alexander Hamilton and the equally skillful Aaron Burr went to the courtroom regularly to study his methods. Both admitted quite freely in private that they copied his style, though neither was ever able to acquire the wonderful golden voice, the genuine phenomenon that made Lennox so notable.

On one of these occasions, after making a thrilling speech, when he filled the souls of both Hamilton and Burr with despair, a great Onondaga sachem, in the full costume of his nation, said to his friend Willet, once a renowned hunter:

"I always knew Dagaeoga could use more words than any one else could find in the biggest dictionary."

THE END

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

(Page 2) The character of Jacobus Huysman has a very noticeable dialect. The spelling of "iss," "wass," and "hass," plus various other words in his dialogue, is preserved as in the original text.

(Page 17) Alfred Grosvenor is referred as "Grovenor's."

CHAPTER III

(Page 53) "hiden" instead of "hidden." Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER IV

(Page 71) A missing closing quote at "... and so I decided against him." Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER V

(Page 92) "probabilty" instead of "probability." Corrected in this text.

(Page 93) "She's going almost due south ..." opens with a single quote. Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER VIII

(Page 144) "firce" instead of "fierce." Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER XI

(Page 203) Once again, Captain Stuart Whyte is referred to as "White."

(Page 214) A missing closing quote at "... for the term of the war, at least." Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER XII

(Page 221) "You" instead of "your" in "your look iss changed!" Corrected in this text.

CHAPTER XIII

(Pages 245, 246). The name "Todohado" appears twice in quick succession on these pages. Presumably the spirit Tododaho was intended.

(Page 247). Tayoga uses "Degaeoga," presumably meaning Dagaeoga, his name for Lennox.

(Page 248) "atack" instead of "attack." Corrected in this text.

(Page 255) The location of Isle-aux-Noix appears here as "Isle-aux-noix."

CHAPTER XIV

(Page 266) A comma appeared to terminate the sentence "... laid by the Ojibway." Corrected in this text.

(Page 282) The lieutenant of the Hawk, John Lanham, is referred to as "Lanhan."

CHAPTER XV

(Page 293) David Willet is referred to as "Willett."