IF Dollard was surprised at finding Claire standing by the fire dressed for her journey, he gave himself no time for uttering it, but directed Jacques to bring down madame’s boxes and to wake Louise.

“One casket will be enough, Jacques,” countermanded madame; “the one which has been opened. If there is such haste, the others can be sent hereafter. As for my poor Louise, I will not have her waked; this is but her second night’s sleep on land. Some one can be found in Montreal to attend me, and I shall see her again soon.”

Jacques shuffled down from his master’s apartment, carrying the luggage on his shoulder and his candle in one hand. Dollard waited for him, to say aside:

“In three weeks come to Montreal and ask for your lady at the governor’s house. Subject yourself to her orders thenceforward.”

“Yes, m’sieur,” grunted Jacques.

Again his candle on the twisted staircase caused great shadows to stalk through the cellar gloom—Claire’s shadow stretching forward a magnified head at its dense future; Dollard’s shadow towering so high as to be bent at right angles and flattened on the joists above. Once more were the bars put up, this time shutting two inmates out of the seigniory house.

Dollard hurried his wife into the boat. One Indian held the boat to the beach, another stored the luggage, and immediately they dropped into their places and took the oars, and the boat was off.

It was a silent night and very little breeze flowed along the surface of the water. The moon seemed lost walking so far down the west sky. She struck a path of gold crosswise of Lake St. Louis, and it grew with the progress of the boat, still traveling downriver and twinkling like a moving pavement of burnished disks.

Going with the current, the Hurons had little need to labor, and the gush of their oars came at longer intervals than during the up-stream voyage.

Dollard had wrapped Claire well. He held the furs around her with one arm. By that ghostly daylight which the moon makes she could follow every line and contour of his face. He examined every visible point on the river’s surface, and turned an acute ear for shore sounds. Before he began to speak, the disturbance of his spirit reached her, and quite drove all mention of Mademoiselle de Granville from her lips.

Having satisfied himself that no other craft haunted the river, Dollard turned his eyes upon Claire’s, and spoke to her ear so that his voice was lost two feet away.

“Claire, the Iroquois are the curse of this province. Let me tell you what they have done. They are a confederation of five Indian nations: their settlements are south of the great Lake Ontario, but they spread themselves all along the St. Lawrence, murder settlers, make forays into Montreal and Quebec; they have almost exterminated the Christian Hurons, and when they offer us truces they do it only to throw us off our guard. The history of this colony is a history of a hand-to-hand struggle against the Iroquois.”

“If they are so strong,” whispered Claire, “how have the settlements lived at all?”

“Partly because their mode of warfare is peculiar, and consists in overrunning, harassing, and burning certain points and then retiring to the woods again, and partly because they needed the French. We are useful to them in furnishing certain supplies for which they trade. But they also trade with the Dutch colony on the Hudson River. Only lately have they made up their minds to sweep over this province and destroy it.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know that at this time two bands of these savages, each hundreds strong, are moving to meet each other somewhere on the Ottawa River. We have heard rumors, and some prisoners have been brought in and made to confess, and the mere fact that no skulking parties haunt us shows that they are massing.”

Dollard drew a deep breath.

“I shall not dread this danger, being with you,” said Claire.

“This is what I must tell you. Claire, there was a man in Montreal who thought the sacking of New France could be prevented if a few determined men would go out and meet these savages on the way, as aggressors, instead of fighting simply on the defensive, as we have done so long. This man found sixteen other young men of his own mind, and they all took a sacred oath to devote themselves to this purpose.”

“Sixteen!” breathed the shuddering girl. “Only sixteen against a thousand Indians?”

“Sixteen are enough if they be fit for the enterprise. One point of rock will break any number of waves. These sixteen men and their leader then obtained the governor’s consent to their enterprise, and they will kneel in the chapel of the HÔtel-Dieu and receive absolution at daybreak this morning.”

“Their leader is Adam Dollard!” Claire’s whispered cry broke out.

“Their leader is Adam Dollard,” he echoed.

She uttered no other sound, but rose up in the boat.

Dollard caught her in his arms, and set her upon his knees. They held each other in an embrace like the rigid lock of death, the smiling, pale night seeming full of crashing and grinding noises, and of chaos like mountains falling.

Length after length the boat shot on, dumb heart-beat after dumb heart-beat, mile after mile. It began to shiver uneasily. Alert to what was before them, and indifferent to their freight of stone in the boat’s end, the Hurons slipped to their knees, each unshipped his oars and took one of the dripping pair for a paddle, fixed his roused eyes on the twisting current, and prepared for the rapids of Lachine. Like an arrow just when the bowstring twangs came the boat at a rock, to be paddled as cleanly aside as if that hissing mass had been a shadow. Right, left, ahead the rapids boiled up; slight shocks ran through the thin-skinned craft as it dodged, shied, leaped, half whirled and half reversed, tumultuously tumbled or shot as if going down a flume. While it lasted the danger seemed endless. But those skilled paddlers played through it with grins of delight folding creases in their leather faces, nor did they settle down dogged and dull Indians again until the boat shot freely out of the rapids upon tame moonlighted ripples once more.

After the Lachine, Dollard lifted his head and said to Claire:

“We start on our expedition as soon as mass is done this morning. It goes without saying that I was pledged to this when I went to Quebec. I cannot go back from it now.”

“There is no thought of your going back from it now,” Claire spoke to him. “But, Dollard, is there hope of any man’s returning alive from this expedition?”

“We are sworn to give no quarter and to take none.”

The Indians, pointing their boat towards Montreal, were now pulling with long easy strokes. A little rocky island rose between voyagers and settling moon.

“O Claire! I loved you so! that is all my excuse. I meant not to bring such anguish upon you.”

“Dollard, I forbid you to regret your marriage. I myself have no regrets.”

“I knew not what I was doing.” His words dropped with effort. She could feel his throat strongly sobbing.

“Don’t fret, my Dollard.” Claire smoothed down those laboring veins with her satin palm. “We are, indeed, young to die. I thought we should live years together. But this marriage gave us nearly a week of paradise. And that is more happiness, I am experienced enough to believe, than many wedded couples have in a lifetime.”

“Claire, the family of the Governor Maisonneuve will receive you and treat you with all courtesy; first for your own sake, and in a small degree for mine. I have set down in my will that you are to have all my rude belongings, and Jacques is sworn your trusty servant.”

“Dollard, hear what I have to say,” she exclaimed, pressing his temples between her hands. “You meant to leave me behind you at St. Bernard. You forget that the blood of man-warriors, the blood of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, runs in my veins. Doubt not that I shall go with you on this expedition. Do you think I have no courage because I am afraid of mice and lightning?”

“I knew not that you were afraid of mice and lightning, my Claire.”

“Am I to be the wife of Dollard and have sixteen young men thrust between him and myself, all accounted worthy of martyrdom above me?”

“Daughter of a Montmorency!” burst out Dollard with passion; “better than any man on earth! I do you homage—I prostrate myself—I adore you! Yet must I profane your ears with this: no woman can go with the expedition without bringing discredit on it.”

“Not even your wife?”

“Not even my wife. After absolution in the chapel this morning we are set apart, consecrated to the purpose before us.”

Claire dropped her face and said:

“I comprehend.” He held her upon his breast the brief remainder of their journey, prostrated as she had not been by the shock of his confession.

Mount Royal stood dome-like on Montreal island, a huge shadow glooming out of the north-west upon the little village. After shifting about from a river point of view, those structures composing the town finally settled in their order: the fort, the rough stone seminary of St. Sulpice, the HÔtel-Dieu, the wooden houses standing in a single long row, and eastward the great fortified mill surrounded by a wall. The village itself had neither wall nor palisade.

Surrounding dark fields absorbed light and gave back no glint of dew or sprinkling green blade, for the seed-sowing was not yet finished. Black bears squatting or standing about the fields at length revealed themselves as charred stumps and half trees.

“You have not told me the route your expedition goes,” whispered Claire.

“We go in that direction—up the Ottawa River.” Dollard swept out his arm indicating the west.

“There is one thing. Do not place me in the governor’s charge. How can I be a guest, when I would lie night and day before some shrine? Are there no convents in Montreal? A convent is my allotted shelter.”

“There are only the nuns of the HÔtel-Dieu,” he murmured back. “They, also, would receive you into kind protection; but, my Claire, they are poor. Montreal is not Quebec. Our nuns lived at first in one room. Now they have the hospital; but it is a wooden building, exposed by its situation.”

“Let me go to the nuns,” she insisted. “And there is one other thing. Do not tell them who I am. Say nothing about me, that I may have no inquiries to answer concerning our marriage and his lordship the bishop.”

“Our nuns of St. Joseph and the Sulpitians of Montreal bear not too much love for the bishop,” said Dollard. “But every wish you have is my wish. I will say nothing to the nuns, and you may tell them only what you will.”

A strong pallor toning up to yellow had been growing from the east to the detriment of the moon. Now a pencil line of pink lay across the horizon, and the general dewiness of objects became apparent. The mountain turned from shadow into perpendicular earth and half-budded trees. Some people were stirring in Montreal, and a dog ran towards the river barking as the boat touched the wharf.