Jolycoeur, lounging with his shoulders against the barrack wall, gave furtive attention to La Salle as the explorer appeared within the fort. Even his eye was deceived by his master’s bearing in giving him the signal to approach.

The wind was helpful to La Salle, but he only half met daylight and saw Jolycoeur taking strange shapes.

“Go to Father Hennepin’s old mission house,” he slowly commanded, “and send Monsieur de Tonty directly to me.”

The man, not daring to disobey until he could take refuge in Fort Frontenac with the gates closed behind the explorer, went on this errand.

“What ails Sieur de la Salle?” inquired the cook, coming out of his bakehouse to get this news of a sentinel.

They both watched the AbbÉ Cavelier making vain efforts to get hold of his misdirected brother.

“Gone mad with pride,” suggested the sentinel. “The less he prospers the loftier I have always heard he bears himself. Would the governor of New France climb the wind with a tread like that?”

Outside the gate La Salle’s limbs failed. The laboring AbbÉ then dragged him along, and it seemed an immense dÉtour he was obliged to make to pass the extended foundation.

“Now you will believe my words which I spoke this morning concerning the peril we all stand in,” panted this sorely taxed brother. “The Cavelier family is destroyed. My brother La Salle—Robert—my child! Shall I give you absolution?”

“Not yet,” gasped La Salle.

“If you had ever taken my advice, this miserable end had not come upon you.”

“I am not ended,” gasped La Salle.

“Oh, my brother,” lamented Jean Cavelier, tucking up his cassock as he bent to the strain, “I have but one consolation in my wretchedness. This is better for you than the marriage you would have made. What business have you to ally yourself with Le Ber? What business have you with marriage at all? For my part, I would object to any marriage you had in view, but Le Ber’s daughter was the worst marriage for you in New France.”

“Tonty!” gasped La Salle. With the swiftness of an Indian, Tonty was flying across the clearing. The explorer’s unwary messenger Jolycoeur he had left behind him bound with hide thongs and lying in Father Hennepin’s inner room.

“Yes, yonder comes your Monsieur de Tonty who so easily gave up your post on the Illinois,” panted the AbbÉ Cavelier. “Like all your worthless followers he hath no attachment to your person.”

“There is more love in his iron hand,” La Salle’s paralyzing mouth flung out, “than in any other living heart!”

Needing no explanation from the AbbÉ, the commandant from Fort St. Louis took strong hold of La Salle and hurried him to the mission house. They faced the wind, and Tonty’s cap blew off, his rings of black hair flaring to a fierce uprightness.

The surgeon ran out of the dwelling and met and helped them in, and thus tardily resistance to the poison was begun, but it had found its hardiest victim since the day of Socrates.

Tonty’s iron hand brought out of Jolycoeur immediate confession of the poison he had used.

In an age when most cunning and deadly drugs were freely handled, and men who would not shed blood thought it no sin to take enemies neatly off the scene by the magic of a dish, Jolycoeur was not without knowledge of a plant called hemlock, growing ready to the hand of a good poisoner in the New World.

Noon stood in the sky, half shredding vapors, and lighting cool sparkles upon the lake. Afternoon dragged its mute and heavy hours westward.

Men left the mission house and entered it again, carrying wood or water.

The sun set in the lake, parting clouds before his sinking visage and stretching his rays like long arms of fire to smite the heaving water.

Twilight rose out of the earth and crept skyward, blotting all visible shore. Fort Frontenac stood an indistinct mass beside the Cataraqui, as beside another lake. Stars seemed to run and meet and dive in long ripples. The wash of water up the sand subsided in force as the wind sunk, leaving air space for that ceaseless tune breathed by a great forest.

Overhead, from a port of cloud, the moon’s sail pushed out suddenly, less round than it had been the night before, and owning by such depression that she had begun tacking toward her third quarter. Fort and settlements again found their proportions, and Father Hennepin’s cross stood clear and fair, throwing its shadow across the mission house.

Within the silent mission house warmth and redness were diffused from logs piled in the chimney.

The AbbÉ Cavelier’s cassock rose and fell with that sleep which follows great anxiety and exhaustion. He reclined against the lowest step of a broken ladder-way which once ascended from corner to loft. The men, except one who stood guard outside in the shadow of the house, were asleep in the next room.

La Salle rested before the hearth on some of the skins Tonty had received from his Indian friend and brother. Whenever the explorer opened his eyes he saw Tonty sitting awake on the floor beside him.

“Sleep,” urged La Salle.

“I shall not sleep again,” said Tonty, “until I see you safely on your way toward France.”

“This has been worse than the dose of verdigris I once got.”

“Jolycoeur says he used hemlock,” responded Tonty. “He accused everybody in New France of setting him on to the deed, but I silenced that.”

“I had not yet dismissed him, Tonty. The scoundrel hath claims on me for two years’ wages.”

“He should have got his wages of me,” exclaimed Tonty, “if this proved your death. He should have as many bullets as his body could hold.”

“Tonty, untie the fellow and turn him out and discharge his wages for me with some of the skins you have put under me.” La Salle rose on his elbow and then sat up. His face was very haggard, but the practical clear eye dominated it. “These fellows cannot balk me. I have lost all that makes life, except my friend. But I shall come back and take the great west yet! A man with a purpose cannot be killed, Tonty. He goes on. He must go on.”