Fort Frontenac was a seignorial rather than a military post, and its discipline had been lax since the governor’s Associates seized it, yet a sentinel paced this morning before the officers’ quarters. When he saw the signal withdrawn and a lovely face with dark eyelashes and a topknot of curls looking down at him, he could do nothing but salute it, and Barbe shut her window.

Dropping in excitement from the bunk, she ran across the upper room to knock at La Salle’s door.

A boy stood basking in solitude by the chimney.

Her uncle La Salle’s apartment seemed filled with one strong indignant voice, leaking through crevices and betraying its matter to the common hall.

“You may knock there until you faint of hunger,” remarked the lad at the hearth. “I also want my breakfast, but these precious Associates will let us starve in the fort they have stolen before they dole us out any food. I would not mind going into the barracks and messing, but I have you also to consider.”

“It is not anything to eat, Colin—it is pressing need of my uncle La Salle!”

“The Abbé has pressing need of our uncle La Salle. It was great relief to catch him here at Frontenac. I have heard every bit of the lecture: what amounts our uncle the Abbé has ventured in western explorations; and what a fruitless journey he has made here to rescue for himself some of the stores of this fortress; and what danger all we Caveliers stand in of being poisoned on account of my uncle La Salle, so that the Abbé can scarce trust us out of his sight, even with nuns guarding you.”

To Barbe’s continued knocking her guardian made the curtest reply. He opened the door, looked at her sternly, saying, “Go away, mademoiselle,” and shut it tightly again.

She ran back to her lookout and was able to discern the same canoe moving off on the lake.

“Colin,” demanded Barbe, wrapping herself, “You must run with me.”

“Certainly, mademoiselle, and I trust you are making haste toward a table.”

“We must run outside the fortress.”

Though the boy felt it a grievance that he should follow instead of lead to any adventure, he dashed heartily out with her, intending to take his place when he understood the action. Rain charged full in their faces. The sentry was inclined to hold them at the fortress gate until he had orders, and Barbe’s impatience darted from her eyes.

“You will get me into trouble,” he said. “This gate has been swinging over-much lately.”

“Let us out,” persuaded Colin. “The Associates will not care what becomes of a couple of Caveliers.”

“Where are you going?”

“My sister wishes to run to the Iroquois village,” responded Colin, “and beg there for a little sagamite. We get nothing to eat in Fort Frontenac.”

The soldier laughed.

“If you are going to the Iroquois village why don’t you say your errand is to Catharine Tegahkouita? It is no sin to ask an Indian saint’s prayers.”

Barbe formed her lips to inquire, “Has Tegahkouita come to Fort Frontenac?” But this impulse passed into discreet silence, and the man let them out.

They ran along the palisades southward, Barbe keeping abreast of Colin though she made skimming dips as the swallow flies, and with a détour quite to the lake’s verge, avoided the foundation of an outwork.

Father Hennepin’s cross stood up, a huge white landmark between habitant settlement on the lake, and Indian village farther west but visible through the clearing. Ontario seemed to rise higher and top the world, its green curves breaking at their extremities into white spatter, the one boat in sight making deep obeisance to heaving water.

“Do you see a canoe riding yonder?” exclaimed Barbe to Colin, as they ran along wet sand.

“Any one may see a canoe riding yonder. Was it to race with that canoe we came out, mademoiselle?”

“Wave your arms and make signals to the men in it, Colin. They must be stopped. I am sure that one is Monsieur de Tonty, and they were turned away from the fortress gate. They have business with our uncle La Salle, and see how far they have gone before we could get out ourselves!”

“Why, then, did you follow?” demanded her brother, waving his arms and flinging his cap in the rain. “They may have business with our uncle La Salle, but they have no business with a girl. This was quite my affair, Mademoiselle Cavelier.”

A maid whose feet were heavy with the mud of a once ploughed clearing could say little in praise of such floundering. She paid no attention to Colin’s rebuke, but watched for the canoe to turn landward. Satisfied that it was heading toward them, Barbe withdrew from the border of the lake. She would not shelter herself in any deserted hut of the habitant village. Colin followed her in vexation to Father Hennepin’s mission house, remonstrating as he skipped, and turning to watch the canoe with rain beating his face.

They found the door open. The floor was covered with sand blown there, and small stones cast by the hands of irreverent passing Indian boys. The chapel stood a few yards away, but this whole small settlement was dominated by its cross.[11]

Barbe and Colin were scarcely under this roof shelter before Tonty strode up to the door. He took off his hat with the left hand, his dark face bearing the rain like a hardy flower. Dangers, perpetual immersion in Nature, and the stimulus of vast undertakings had so matured Tonty that Barbe felt more awe of his buckskin presence than her memory of the fine young soldier in Montreal could warrant. She wanted to look at him and say nothing. Colin, who knew this soldier only by reputation, was eager to meet and urge him into Father Hennepin’s house.

Tonty’s reluctant step crunched sand on the boards. He kept his gaze upon Barbe and inquired,—

“Have I the honor, mademoiselle, to address the niece of Monsieur de la Salle?”

“The niece and nephew of Monsieur de la Salle,” put forth Colin.

“Yes, monsieur. You may remember me as the young tiger-cat who sprung upon my uncle La Salle when you arrived with him from France.”

“I never forgot you, mademoiselle. You so much resemble Monsieur de la Salle.”

“It is on his account we have run out of the fort to stop you. He does not know you are here. I saw the sentinel close the gate against some one, and afterward your boat pushed out.”

“And did you shake a signal from an upper window in the fort?”

“Monsieur, I could not be sure that you saw it, though I could see your boat.”

“She made it very much her affair,” observed Colin, with the merciless disapproval of a lad. “Monsieur de Tonty, there was no use in her trampling through sand and rain like a Huron witch going to some herb gathering. It was my business to do the errand of my uncle La Salle. When she goes back she will get a lecture and a penance, for all her sixteen years.”

“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “I am distressed if my withdrawal from Fort Frontenac causes you trouble. I meant to camp here. I was determined to see Monsieur de la Salle.”

“Monsieur,” courageously replied Barbe, “you cause me no trouble at all. I thought you were returning to your fort on the Illinois. I did not stop to tell my brother, but made him run with me. It is a shame that the enemies of my uncle La Salle hold you out of Fort Frontenac.”

“But very little would you get to eat there,” consoled young Cavelier. “We have had nothing to break our fast on this morning.”

“Then let us get ready some breakfast for you,” proposed Tonty, as his men entered with the lading of the canoe. They had stopped at the doorstep, but Father Hennepin’s hewed log house contained two rooms, and he pointed them to the inner one. There they let down their loads, one man, a surgeon, remaining, and the other, a canoeman, going out again in search of fuel.

“Monsieur, it would be better for us to hurry back to the fortress and call my uncle La Salle.”

“Nothing will satisfy you, mademoiselle,” denounced Colin. “Out you must come to stop Monsieur de Tonty. Now back you must go through weather which is not fitting for any demoiselle to face.”

“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “if you return now it will be my duty to escort you as far as the fortress gate.”

Barbe drew her wrappings over her face, as he had seen a wild sensitive plant fold its leaves and close its cups.

“I will retire to the chapel and wait there until my uncle La Salle comes,” she decided, “and my brother must run to call him.”

“You may take to sanctuary as soon as you please,” responded Colin, “and I will attend to my uncle La Salle’s business. But the first call I make shall be upon the cook in this camp.”

V.
FATHER HENNEPIN’S CHAPEL.

Tonty held a buffalo robe over Barbe during her quick transit from cabin to church. Its tanned side was toward the weather, and its woolly side continued to comfort her after she was under shelter. Tonty bestowed it around her and closed the door again, leaving her in the dim place.

Father Hennepin’s deserted chapel was of hewed logs like his dwelling. A rude altar remained, but without any ornaments, for the Récollet had carried these away to his western mission. Some unpainted benches stood in a row. The roof could be seen through rafters, and drops of rain with reiterating taps fell along the centre of the floor. A chimney of stones and cement was built outside the chapel, of such a size that its top yawned like an open cell for rain, snow, or summer sunshine. Within, it spread a generous hearth and an expanse of grayish fire-wall little marked by the blue incense which rises from burning wood.

Barbe looked briefly around the chapel. She laid the buffalo hide before the altar and knelt upon it.

Tonty returned with a load of fuel and busied himself at the fireplace. The boom of the lake, and his careful stirring and adjusting in ancient ashes, made a background to her silence. Yet she heard through her devotions every movement he made, and the low whoop peculiar to flame when it leaps to existence and seizes its prey.

A torrent of fire soon poured up the flue. Tonty grasped a brush made of wood shavings, remnant of Father Hennepin’s housekeeping, and whirled dust and litter in the masculine fashion. When he left the chapel it glowed with the resurrected welcome it had given many a primitive congregation of Indians and French settlers, when the lake beat up icy winter foam.

“Colin is a gourmand. All very young people gormandize more or less,” remarked Barbe, with a sense of emancipation from the class she condemned.

“I hope you could eat what I brought you?”

“It was quite delicious, monsieur. I ate every bit of it.”

The boom of the lake intruded between their voices. Barbe’s black eyelashes flickered sensitively upon her cheeks, and Tonty, feeling that he looked too steadily at her, dropped his eyes to his folded arms.

“Monsieur de Tonty,” inquired Barbe, appealing to experience, “do you think sixteen years very young?”

“It is the most charming age in the world, mademoiselle.”

“Monsieur, I mean young for maturing one’s plan of life.”

“That depends upon the person,” replied Tonty. “At sixteen I was revolting against the tyranny which choked Italy. And I was an exile from my country before the age of twenty, mademoiselle.”

Barbe gazed straight at Tonty, her gray eyes firing like opals with enthusiasm.

“And my uncle La Salle at sixteen was already planning his discoveries. Monsieur, I also have my plans. Many missionaries must be needed among the Indians.”

“You do not propose going as a missionary among the Indians, mademoiselle?”

Barbe critically examined his smile. She evaded his query.

“Are the Indian women beautiful, Monsieur de Tonty?”

“They do not appear so to me, mademoiselle, though the Illinois are a straight and well-made race.”

“You must find it a grand thing to range that western country.”

“But in the midst of our grandeur the Iroquois threaten us even there. How would mademoiselle like to mediate between these invaders and the timid Illinois, suspected by one tribe and threatened by the other; to carry the wampum belt of peace on the open field between two armies, and for your pains get your scalp-lock around the fingers of a Seneca chief and his dagger into your side?”

“Oh, monsieur!” whispered Barbe, flushing with the wild pinkness of roses on the plains, “what amusements you do have in the great west! And is it a castle on a mountain, that Fort St. Louis of the Illinois?”

“A stockade on a cliff, mademoiselle.”

Tonty felt impelled to put himself nearer this delicate head set with fine small ears and quartered by the angles of the window-frame. When she meditated, her lashes and brows and aquiline curves and gray tones flushing to rose were delightful to a wilderness-saturated man. But he held to his strict position as sentinel.

“Monsieur,” said Barbe, “there is something on my mind which I will tell you. I was thinking of the new world my uncle La Salle discovered, even before you came to Montreal. Now I think constantly of Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Monsieur, I dream of it,—I go in long journeys and never arrive; I see it through clouds, and wide rivers flow between it and me; and I am homesick. Yes, monsieur, that is the strangest thing,—I have cried of homesickness for Fort St. Louis of the Illinois!”

“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, his voice vibrating, “there is a stranger thing. It is this,—that a man with a wretched hand of iron should suddenly find within himself a heart of fire!”

When this confession had burst from him he turned his back without apology, and Barbe’s forehead sunk upon the window-sill.

Within the chapel, drops from the cracked roof still fell in succession, like invisible fingers playing scales along the boards. Outside was the roar of the landlocked sea, and the higher music of falling rain. Barbe let her furtive eyes creep up the sill and find Tonty’s large back on which she looked with abashed but gratified smiles.

“Mademoiselle,” he begged without turning, “forgive what I have said.”

“Certainly, monsieur,” she responded. “What was it that you said?”

“Nothing, mademoiselle, nothing.”

“Then, monsieur, I forgive you for saying nothing.”

Tonty, in his larger perplexity at having made such a confession without La Salle’s leave, missed her sting.

Nothing more was said through the window. Barbe moved back, and the stalwart soldier kept his stern posture; until La Salle, whose approach had been hidden by chimney and mission house, burst abruptly into view. As he came up, both he and Tonty opened their arms. Strong breast to strong breast, cheek touching cheek, spare olive-hued man and dark rich-blooded man hugged each other.

Barbe’s convent lessons of embroidery and pious lore had included no heathen tales of gods or heroes. Yet to her this sight was like a vision of two great cloudy figures stalking across the world and meeting with an embrace.

VI.
LA SALLE AND TONTY.

When one of the men had been called from the mission house to stand guard, they came directly into the chapel, preferring to talk there in the presence of Barbe.

La Salle kissed her hand and her cheek, and she sat down before the fire, spreading the buffalo skin under her feet.

As embers sunk and the talk of the two men went on, she crept as low as this shaggy carpet, resting arms and head upon the bench. The dying fire made exquisite color in this dismal chapel.

“The governor’s man, when he arrived to seize Fort St. Louis, gave you my letter of instructions, Tonty?”

“Yes, Monsieur de la Salle.”

“Then, my lad, why have you abandoned the post and followed me? You should have stayed to be my representative. They have Frontenac. Crévecœur was ruined for us. If they get St. Louis of the Illinois entirely into their hands they will claim the whole of Louisiana, these precious Associates.”

Tonty, laying his sound arm across his commandant’s shoulder, exclaimed, “Monsieur, I have followed you five hundred leagues to drag that rascal Jolycœur back with me. He told at Fort St. Louis that this should be your last journey.”

La Salle laughed.

“Let me tie Jolycœur and fling him into my canoe, and I turn back at once. I can hold your claims on the Illinois against any number of governor’s agents. Take the surgeon Liotot in Jolycœur’s place. Liotot came with me, anxious to return to France.”

“Jolycœur is no worse than the others, my Tonty, and he has had many opportunities. How often has my life been threatened!”

“He intends mischief, monsieur. If I had heard it before you set out, this journey need not have been made.”

“Tonty,” declared the explorer, “I think sometimes I carry my own destruction within myself. I will not chop nice phrases for these hounds who continually ruin my undertakings by their faithlessness. If a man must keep patting the populace, he can do little else. But I am glad you overtook me here. My Tonty, if I had a hundred men like you I could spread out the unknown wilderness and possess it as that child possesses that hide of buffalo.”

Though their undertakings were united, and the Italian had staked his fortune in the Norman’s ventures, La Salle always assumed, and Tonty from the first granted him, entire mastery of the West. Both looked with occupied eyes at Barbe, who felt her life enlarged by witnessing this conference.

“Monsieur, what aspect have affairs taken since you reached Fort Frontenac?”

“Worse, Tonty, than I dreaded when I left the Illinois. You know how this new governor stripped Fort Frontenac of men and made its unprotected state an excuse for seizing it, saying I had not obeyed the king’s order to maintain a garrison. And you know how he and the merchants of Montreal have possessed themselves of my seigniory here. They have sold and are still busy selling my goods from this post, putting the money into their pockets. I spent nearly thirty-five thousand francs improving this grant of Frontenac. But worse than that, Tonty, they have ruined my credit both here and in France. Even my brother will no more lift a finger for me. The king is turned against me. The fortunes of my family—even the fortune of that child—are sucked down in my ruin.”

Barbe noted her own bankruptcy with the unconcern of youth. Monsieur de Tonty’s face, when you looked up at it from a rug beside the hearth, showed well its full rounded chin, square jaws, and high temples, the richness of its Italian coloring against the blackness of its Italian hair.

“They call me a dreamer and a madman, these fellows now in power, and have persuaded the king that my discoveries are of no account.”

“Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “do you remember the mouth of the great river?”[12]

Face glowed opposite face as they felt the log walls roll away from environing their vision. It was no longer the wash of the Ontario they heard, but the voice of the Mexican gulf. The yellow flood of Mississippi poured out between marsh borders. Again discharges of musketry seemed to shake the morasses beside a naked water world, the Te Deum to arise, and the explorer to be heard proclaiming,—

“In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible, and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God king of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I, this ninth day of April, one thousand and six hundred and eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of his Majesty, which I hold in my hand and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken and do now take, in the name of his Majesty and of his successors to the crown, possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, people, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio, as also along the river Colbert or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves thereinto, from its source beyond the country of the Nadouessioux, as far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf of Mexico.”[13]

“Monsieur,” exclaimed Tonty, “the plunderers of your fortune cannot take away that discovery or blot out the world you then opened. And what is Europe compared to this vast country? At the height of his magnificence Louis cannot picture to himself the grandeur of this western empire. France is but the palm of his hand beside it. It stretches from endless snow to endless heat; its breadth no man may guess. Nearly all the native tribes affiliate readily with the French. We have to dispute us only the English who hold a little strip by the ocean, the Dutch with smaller holding inland, and a few Spaniards along the Gulf.”

“And all may be driven out before the arms of France,” exclaimed La Salle. “These crawling merchants and La Barre,—soldier, he calls himself!—see nothing of this. Every man for his own purse among them. But thou seest it, Tonty. I see it. And we are no knights on a crusade. Nor are we unpractised courtiers shredding our finery away on the briers of the wilderness. This western enterprise is based on geographical facts. No mind can follow all the development of that rich land. It is an empire,” declared La Salle, striding between hearth and chancel-rail, unconscious that he lifted his voice to the rafters of a sanctuary, “which Louis might drop France itself to grasp!”

“The king will be convinced of this, Monsieur de la Salle, when you again have his ear. When you have showed him what streams of commerce must flow out through a post stationed at the mouth of the Mississippi. France will then have a cord drawn half around this country.”

“Tonty, if you could be commandant of every fort I build, navigator of every ship I set afloat, if you could live in every man who labors for me, if you could stand forever between those Iroquois wolves and the tribes we try to band for mutual protection, and at the same time, if you could always be at my side to ward off gun, knife, and poison,—you would make me the most successful man on earth.”

“I have travelled five hundred leagues to ward poison away from you, monsieur. And you laugh at me.”

“For your pains, I will dismiss Jolycœur to-day, and take Liotot with me.”

“And will you come here as soon as you dismiss him and let my men prepare your food?”

“Willingly. Fort Frontenac, with my rights in it denied, is no halting place for me. To-morrow I set out again to France, and you to the fort on the Illinois. But, Tonty—”

La Salle’s face relaxed into tenderness as he laid his hands upon his friend’s shoulders. The Italian’s ardent temperament was the only agent which ever fused and made facile of tongue and easy of confidence that man of cold reserve known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what he had to say. They both glanced at Barbe and flushed. But the nebulous thought surrounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never condensed to spoken word.

Tonty’s sentinel opened the chapel door and broke up this council. He said an Indian stood there with him demanding to be admitted.

VII.
AN ADOPTION.

“What does he want?” inquired Tonty.

“He is determined to speak with you, Monsieur de Tonty, from what I can gather out of his words.”

“Let him wait in the mission house, then,” said Tonty, “until Monsieur de la Salle has ended his business.”

“I have ended,” said La Salle. “It is time I ordered my men and baggage and canoes out of Fort Frontenac.”

“Monsieur, remain, and let an order from you be taken to the gate.”

“Some of those sulky fellows need my hand over them, Tonty. Besides, there are matters which must be definitely settled before I leave the fort. I have need to go myself, besides the obligation to deliver this runaway girl, on whom her uncle La Salle is always bringing penances.”

Barbe sprung up and put herself in the attitude of accompanying him.

“Mademoiselle,” said Tonty, “the rain is still falling. If Monsieur de la Salle can carry this hide over you, it will be some protection.”

He took up the buffalo skin, and shook it to loosen any dust which might be clinging to the shag.

“Monsieur, you are very good,” she answered. “But it is not necessary for me.”

“Mademoiselle cares very little about a wetting,” said La Salle. “She was born to be a princess of the backwoods. Call in your Indian before we go, Tonty. He may have some news for us.”

Tonty spoke to the sentinel, whose fingers visibly held the door, and he let pass a tall Iroquois brave carrying such a bundle of rich furs as one of that race above the condition of squaw rarely deigned to lift. His errand was evidently peaceable. He paused and stood like a prince. Neither La Salle nor Tonty remembered his face, though both felt sure he came from the mission village of friendly Iroquois near Fort Frontenac.

“What does my brother want?” inquired La Salle, with sympathy he never showed to his French subordinates.

“He waits to speak to his white brother with the iron hand,” answered the Iroquois.

“Have you brought us bad news?” again inquired La Salle.

“Good news.”

“What is it?”

“It is only to my brother with the iron hand.”

“Can you not speak in the presence of Monsieur de la Salle?” demanded Tonty.

With exquisite reserve the Indian stood silent, waiting the conditions he needed for the delivery of his message.

“It is nothing which concerns me,” said La Salle to Tonty. He prepared to stalk into the weather with Barbe.

Tonty spoke a few words to the waiting savage, who heard without returning any sign, and then followed Barbe, stretching the buffalo hide above her head. When La Salle observed this he failed to ridicule his lieutenant, but took one side of the shaggy canopy in his own hold. It was impossible for the girl to go dry-shod, but Tonty directed her way over the best and firmest ground. They made a solemn procession, for not a word was spoken. When they came to the fortress gate, Tonty again bestowed the robe around her as he had done when she entered the chapel, and stood bareheaded while Barbe—whispering “Adieu, monsieur”—passed out of his sight.

“I have thought of this, Tonty,” said La Salle as he entered; “when she is a few years older she shall come to the fort on the Illinois, if I again reap success.”

“Monsieur de la Salle, I am bound to tell you it will be dangerous for me ever to see mademoiselle again.”

“Monsieur de Tonty,” responded the explorer with his close smile, “I am bound to tell you I think it will be the safest imaginable arrangement for her.”

The gate closed behind him, and Tonty carried back an exhilarated face to the waiting Iroquois.

He entered Father Hennepin’s chapel again, and the Indian followed him to the hearth.

They stood there, ready for conference, the small black savage eye examining Tonty’s face with open approval.

“Now let me have your message,” said the Italian. “Have I ever seen you before? What is your name?”

“Sanomp,” answered the Iroquois. “My white brother with the iron hand has not seen me before.”

He spread open on the bench Barbe had occupied a present of fine furs and dried meat.

“Why does my brother bring me these things?” inquired Tonty, realizing as he looked at the gift how much of this barbarian’s wealth was bestowed in such an offering.

“Listen,” said Sanomp.[14] He had a face of benevolent gravity,—the unhurried, sincere face of man living close to Nature. “It is a chief of the Seneca tribe who speaks to my white brother.”

“I have met a chief of the Seneca tribe before,” remarked Tonty, smiling. “It was in the country of the Illinois, and he wrapped my scalp-lock around his fingers.”

Sanomp smiled, too, without haste, and continued his story.

“I left my people to live near the fort of my French brothers because it was told me the man with a hand of iron was here. When I came here the man with a hand of iron was gone. So I waited for him. Our lives are consumed in waiting for the best things. Five years have I stood by the mouth of Cataraqui. And this morning the man with a hand of iron passed before my face.”

He spoke a mixture of French and Iroquois which enabled Tonty to catch his entire meaning.

“But this hand could not betray me from the lake, to eyes that had never seen me before,” objected the Italian.

Advancing one foot and folding his arms in the attitude of a narrator, the Indian said,—

“Listen. At that time of life when a young Iroquois retires from his tribe to hide in the woods and fast until his okie[15] is revealed to him, four days and four nights the boy Sanomp lay on the ground, rain and dew, moonlight and sunlight passing over him. The boy Sanomp looked up, for an eagle dropped before his eyes. He then knew that the eagle was his okie, and that he was to be a warrior, not a hunter or medicine-man. But the eagle dropped before the feet of a soldier the image of my white brother, and the soldier held up a hand of yellow metal. The boy heard a voice coming from the vision that said to him, ‘Warrior, this is thy friend and brother. Be to him a friend and brother. After thou hast seven times followed the war path go and wait by the mouth of Cataraqui until he comes.’ So when I had seven times followed the war path I came, and my brother being passed by, I waited.”

Tonty’s square brown Italian face was no more sincere than the redder aquiline visage fronting him and telling its vision.

“My brother Sanomp comes in a good time,” he remarked.

The Iroquois next took out his peace pipe and pouch of tobacco. While he filled the bowl and stooped for an ember, Tonty stripped the copper hand of its glove. He held it up before Sanomp as he received the calumet in the other. An aboriginal grunt of strong satisfaction echoed in the chapel.

“Hand of yellow metal,” said Sanomp.

Tonty gravely smoked the pipe and handed it back to Sanomp. Sanomp smoked it, shook the ashes out and put it away.

Thus was the ceremony of adoption finished. Without more talk, the red friend and brother turned from his white friend and brother and went back to his own world.

VIII.
TEGAHKOUITA.

Barbe ran breathless up the stairway, glad to catch sight of her uncle the Abbé so occupied at the lower hearth that he took no heed of her return.

She had counted herself the only woman in Fort Frontenac, yet she found a covered figure standing in front of the chamber door next her own.

Though Barbe had never seen Catharine Tegahkouita[16] she knew this must be the Iroquois virgin who lived a hermit life of devotion in a cabin at Lachine, revered by French and Indians alike. How this saint had reached Fort Frontenac or in whose behalf she was exerting herself Barbe could not conjecture. Tegahkouita had interceded for many afflicted people and her prayers were much sought after.

The Indian girl kept her face entirely covered. No man knew that it was comely or even what its features were like. The chronicler tells us when she was a young orphan beside her uncle’s lodge-fire her eyes were too weak to bear the light of the sun, and in this darkness began the devotion which distinguished her life. What was first a necessity, became finally her choice, and she shut herself from the world.

To Barbe, Tegahkouita was an object of religious awe tempered by that criticism in which all young creatures secretly indulge. She sat on the bench as if in meditation, but her eyes crept up and down that straight and motionless and blanket-eclipsed presence. She knew that Tegahkouita was good; was it not told of the Indian girl that she rolled three days in a bed of thorns, and that she often walked barefooted in ice and snow, to discipline her body? She was not afraid of Tegahkouita. But she wished somebody else would come into the room who could break the saint’s death-like silence. Sainthood was a very safe condition, but Barbe found it impossible to admire the outward appearance of a living saint.

La Salle had stopped at the barracks to order out his men, and Colin who had taken to that part of the fort for amusement, watched their transfer with much interest.

Wind was conquering rain. It blew keenly from the southwest, and sung at the corners of Frontenac, whirling dead leaves like fugitive birds into the area of the fort. La Salle’s men turned out of their quarters with reluctance to exchange safety and comfort for exposure and a leaky camp. The explorer stood and saw them pass before him bearing their various burdens, excepting one man who slouched by the door of the bakehouse as if he had stationed himself there to see that they passed in order out of the gate.

“Come here, you Jolycœur,” called La Salle, lifting his finger.

Jolycœur, savagely hairy, approached with that look of sulky menace La Salle never appeared to see in his servants.

“Where is your load of goods?” inquired the explorer.

Jolycœur lifted a quick look, and dropping itagain, replied, “Sieur de la Salle, I was waiting for the cook to hand me out the dishes you ordered against you came back.”

La Salle examined him through half-shut eyes. It was this man’s constant duty to prepare his food. Tonty and his brother Jean had so occupied his morning that he had found no time for eating. A man inured to hardships can fast with very little thought about the matter, but he decided if Jolycœur had not yet handled this meal he might hazard some last service from a man who had missed so many opportunities.

“Did you cook my breakfast?” he inquired.

“Sieur de la Salle, I dared not put my nose in the bakehouse. This cook is the worst man in Fort Frontenac.”

The cook appearing with full hands in his door, La Salle said to Jolycœur, “Carry those platters into the lodge,” and he watched the minutest action of the man’s elbows, walking behind him into the lower apartment of the dwelling. A table stood there on which Jolycœur began to arrange the dishes with surly carelessness.

The explorer forgot him the moment they entered, for two people occupied this room in close talk. Challenging whatever ill Jacques le Ber and the Abbé Cavelier had prepared, La Salle advanced beyond the table with the chill and defiant bearing natural to him.

“Monsieur le Ber and I have been discussing this alliance you are so anxious to make with his family,” spoke the Abbé.

The explorer met Le Ber’s face full of that triumphant contempt which men strangely feel for other men who have fallen and become stepping-stones of fortune to themselves. He turned away without answer, and began to eat indifferently from the dishes Jolycœur had left ready, standing beside the table while he ate.

“If Jacques le Ber were as anxious for the marriage as yourself,—but I told you this morning, my brother La Salle, what madness it must seem to all sane men,—it could not be arranged. His daughter hath refused to see you.”

“My thanks are due to my brother the Abbé for his nice management of all my affairs,” sneered La Salle. “I comprehend there is nothing which he will not endeavor to mar for me. It surely is madness which induces a man against all experience to confide in his brother.”

Jean Cavelier replied with a shrug and a spread of the hands which said, “In such coin of gratitude am I always paid.”

“Sieur de la Salle,” volunteered Le Ber, rising and coming forward with natural candor, “it is not so long ago that your proposal would have made me proud, and the Abbé hath not ill managed it now. Monsieur, I wish my girl to marry. I have been ready for any marriage she would accept. She has indeed shown more liking for you than for any other man in New France. Monsieur, I would far rather have her married than bound to the life she leads. But if you were in a position to marry, Jeanne refuses your hand.”

“Has she said this to you?” inquired La Salle.

“I have not seen her to-day,” replied Le Ber. “She has the Iroquois virgin Tegahkouita with her. I brought Tegahkouita here because she was besought for some healing in our Iroquois lodges near the fort.”

Jacques le Ber stopped. But La Salle calmly heard him thus claim everything pertaining to Fort Frontenac.

“We must do what we can to hold these unstable Indians,” continued Le Ber. “Monsieur, before I could carry your proposal to Jeanne, she sends me Tegahkouita, as if they had some holy contrivance for reading people’s minds. Your brother will confirm to you the words Tegahkouita brought.”

“Mademoiselle le Ber will pray for you always, my brother La Salle. But she refuses even to see you.”

“It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her prayers,” remarked the discontented father, “she hath room enough there for all New France.”

The man who had more than once sprung into the midst of hostile savages and carried their admiration by a word, now stood silent and musing. But his face expressed nothing except determination.

“You shall see her yourself,” Jacques le Ber exclaimed, with the shrewdness of a man holding present advantage, yet gauging fully his antagonist’s force. “You and I were once friends, Sieur de la Salle. I might obtain a worse match for my girl.”

“I will see her,” said La Salle, more in the manner of affirming his own wish than of accepting a concession.

He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind him, the Abbé Cavelier following Le Ber.

As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood as a bar in front of Jeanne’s chamber door. Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian girl of peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously in a voice tuned by much low-spoken prayer, “Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, ‘Tell Sieur de la Salle I will pray for him always, but I must never see his face again.’”

IX.
AN ORDEAL.

“When I have seen Mademoiselle le Ber,” La Salle replied to the blanket of Tegahkouita, “I shall understand from herself what her wishes are in this matter.”

“Sieur de la Salle cannot see her,” spoke Tegahkouita. “She hath no word but this, and she will not see Sieur de la Salle again.”

“I say he shall see her!” exclaimed the Montreal merchant, with asperity created by so many influences working upon his daughter. “He may look upon her this minute!”

Jeanne le Ber’s presence in Fort Frontenac scarcely surprised Barbe, so great was her amazement at the attitude of her uncle La Salle. That he should be suing to Le Ber’s daughter seemed as impossible as any rejection of his suit. She felt toward the saint she had pinched at convent that jealous resentment peculiar to women who desire to have the men of their families married, yet are never satisfied with the choice those men make. Even Barbe, however, considered it a sacrilegious act when Le Ber shook his daughter’s door and demanded admittance.

Jeanne’s complete silence, like a challenge, drew out his imperative force. He broke through every fastening and threw the door wide open.

The small, bare room, scarcely wider than its entrance, afforded no hiding-places. There was little to catch the eye, from rude berth to hooks in the ruder wall, from which the commandant’s clothing had so lately been removed.

Jeanne, the focus of this small cell, had flown to its extremity. As the door burst from its fastenings, everybody in the outer room could see her standing against the wall with noble instinct, facing the breakers of her privacy, but without looking at them. Her eyes rested on her beads, which she told with rapid lips and fingers. A dormer window spread its background of light around her head.

The recoil of inaction which followed Le Ber’s violence was not felt by Tegahkouita. With the swift silence of an Indian and the intuition of a devotee, she at once put herself in the sleeping cell, and kneeled holding up a crucifix before Jeanne. As this symbol of religion was lifted, Jeanne fell upon her knees.

Le Ber had not intended to enter, but indignation drove him on after Tegahkouita. He stood aside and did not approach his child,—a jealous, remorseful, anxious, irritated man.

La Salle could see Jeanne, though with giddy and indistinct vision. Her wool gown lay around her in carven folds, as she knelt like a victim ready for the headsman’s axe.

One of the proudest and most reticent men who ever trod the soil of the New World was thus reduced to woo before his enemy and his kindred; to argue against those unseen forces represented by the Indian girl, and to fight death in his own body with every pleading respiration. For blindness was growing over his eyes. His lungs were tightened. When his back was turned in the room below, Jolycœur had mixed a dish for him.

La Salle’s hardihood was the marvel of his followers. A body and will of electric strength carried him thousands of miles through ways called impassable. Defeat could not defeat him. But this struggle with Jeanne le Ber was harder than any struggle with an estranged king, harder than again bringing up fortune from the depths of ruin, harder than tearing his breath of life from the reluctant air. He reared himself against the chimney-side, pressing with palms and stretched fingers for support, yet maintaining a roused erectness.

“Jeanne!” he spoke; and eyes less blind than his could detect a sinking of her figure at the sound, “I have this to say.”

With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by its unnaturalness, La Salle attempted to place himself nearer the silent object he was to move. As he passed through the doorway he caught at the sides, and then stretched out and braced one palm against the wall. Thus propped he proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful exactness.

“Jeanne, when I have again brought success out of failure, I shall demand you in marriage. Your father permits it.”

Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave no token of having heard him, except the tremor which shook even the folds of her gown.

Too proud to confess his peril and make its appeal to her, and suppressing before so many witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he labored on as La Salle the explorer with the statement of his case.

“Perhaps I cannot see you again for some years. I do not ask words—of acceptance now. It is enough—if you look at me.”

La Salle leaned forward. His eyeballs appeared to swell and protrude as he strained sight for the slightest lifting of the veil before that self-restraining spirit.

Barbe’s wailing suddenly broke all bounds in the outer room. “My uncle the Abbé! Look at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe—he is going to die! Somebody has poisoned or stabbed my uncle La Salle!”

Jean Cavelier with lower outcry ran to help the explorer. But even a brother and a priest has his limitations. La Salle pushed him off.

When Barbe saw this, she threw herself to the floor and hid her face upon the bench. Her kinsman and the hero of her childhood was held over the abyss of death in the hand of Jeanne le Ber, while those who loved him must set their teeth in silence.

But neither this childish judge, nor the father watching for any slight motion of eyelids which might direct all his future hopes and plans, knew what sickening moisture started from every pore of Jeanne le Ber. Still she lifted her fainting eyes only as high as the crucifix Tegahkouita held before her. Compared to her duty as she saw it, she must count as nothing the life of the man she loved.

The Indian girl’s weak sight had no plummet for the face of this greater devotee. Passionately white, its lips praying fast, it stared at the crucifix. Cold drops ran down from the dew which beaded temples and upper lip. Sieur de la Salle—Sieur de la Salle was dying, and asking her for a look! The lifting of her eyelids, the least wavering of her sight, would sweep away the vows she had made to Heaven, and loosen her soul for its swift rush to his breast. To be the wife of La Salle! Her mutter became almost audible as she slid the beads between her fingers. God would keep her from this deadly sin.

The gigantic will of La Salle, become almost material and visible, fell upon her with a cry which must have broken any other endurance.

“Jeanne! look at me now—you shall look at me now!”

Hoarse shouts of battle never tingled through blood as did the voice of this isolated man.

Jeanne’s lips twitched on; she twisted her hands in tense knots against her neck, and her eyes maintained the level of the cross.

Silence—that fragment of eternity—then filled up the room, submerging strained ears. There were remote sounds, like the scream of wind cut by the angles of Fort Frontenac; but no sound which pierced the silence between La Salle and Jeanne le Ber.

He turned around and cast himself through the doorway with a lofty tread as if he were trying to mount skyward. The Abbé Cavelier extended both arms and kept him from stumbling over the settle which Barbe was baptizing with her anguish. She looked up with the distorted visage of one who weeps terribly, and saw the groping explorer led to the staircase. His feet plunged in the descent.

To this noise was added a distinct thud from Jeanne le Ber’s room as her head struck the floor. She lay relaxed and prostrate, and her father lifted her up. Before rising to his feet with her he passed his hand piteously across her bruised forehead.