The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade, and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.

Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress' walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into two bastions, those in the southeast bastion being trained on D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying ammunition.

The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their husbands.

"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"

"The Swiss, her husband, told it."

"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she came from," suggested ZÉlie.

"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."

Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but every wound received.

Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear them.

The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook, when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were laid out in turn on the steps.

Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his feathers and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort. She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill, Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms. At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.

"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward! To lie down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few feathers!"

She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.

"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here. The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."

Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from the stairs.

"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said ZÉlie, coming heavily across the flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"

"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have fallen there to-day."

ZÉlie shivered through her indignation.

"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that very sin?"

"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol. "Mount, Shubenacadie."

"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened ZÉlie.

"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."

"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.

"Why should I work for you? You should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."

"I will not do it!" cried ZÉlie, revolting through every atom of her ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"

The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within the dwarf's chamber.

"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that stunted wight," mused ZÉlie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot down!—a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."

It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions of political alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling, but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room. ZÉlie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited ZÉlie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.

"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced atom.

"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no highness."

Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees, on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed aromatic seeds.

The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening. Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when ZÉlie prepared her for the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within; and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed with shot and sown with mortar.

"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.

"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the loss of half his face."

"Where is Madame La Tour?"

"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay will try to encompass the fort to-night."

"And what business took thee into the turret?"

"Your highness"—

"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.

—"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does D'Aulnay."

Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that ZÉlie's attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of disapproval,—

"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"

"Not ZÉlie, your highness"—

"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.

"That heavy-foot ZÉlie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. ZÉlie is laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild fowl eggs in store."

"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her if she neglects her rightful duties."

Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.

"Yes, your highness"—

"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.

"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress before Madame Bronck went away?"

"What of her?"

"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."

"It is ZÉlie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed speculation to the fire.

"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."

"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.

"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame Bronck's name."

Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was considering what she could do with dignity, ZÉlie rapped and was admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.

Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and the box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and pressed her confidences upon this familiar.

"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and wait until ZÉlie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.

"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?' 'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs—little knowing how I meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and take warning."