At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.

"But see yonder," he said to FranÇois Bastarack his companion, as they stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman below the fort—poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like not treating with a man who did it coolly."

Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked in D'Aulnay's camp as if he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people; and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with the fort.

D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey, composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort. Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line and the gates were opened.

D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly dressed, and such pieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men. Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.

D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. He would have shut out Father Vincent, but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look—becoming to a woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat and much humiliation.

He swept his plume at her feet.

"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de la Tour and I differ in many things."

"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity which cannot taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"

"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."

"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold them signed by your hand."

"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one of the parties to a treaty."

The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to inquire,—

"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay—unless you are about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."

"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.

"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."

"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."

While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless. The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals, regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldiery timber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.

"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand anything in the world!"

D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs. In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made to inherited instincts.

"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."

"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."

The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a merciless enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure the sight of this scaffold?

Marie's women knelt around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to FranÇois Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance—with the horrible platform of death growing behind it—looked, as it did when he happily met the sea wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her trance and the ring of women, and ran before D'Aulnay de Charnisay.

"My lord," said Marie—and she was so beautiful in her ivory pallor, so wonderful with fire moving from the deep places of her dilated black eyes that he felt satisfaction in attending to her—"it is useless to talk to a man like you."

"Quite, madame," said D'Aulnay. "I never discuss affairs with a woman."

"But you may discuss them with the king when he learns that you have hanged with other soldiers of a ransomed garrison a young officer of the house of De Born."

D'Aulnay ran his eye along the line. The unrest of Edelwald at Marie's slightest parley with D'Aulnay reminded the keen governor of the face he had last night seen under the cowl.

"The king will be obliged to me," he observed, "when one less heretical De Born cumbers his realm."

"The only plea I make to you, my lord D'Aulnay, is that you hang me also. For I deserve it. My men had no faith in your military honor, and I had."

"Madame, you remind me of a fact I desired to overlook. You are indeed a traitor deserving death. But of my clemency, and not because you are a woman, for you yourself have forgotten that in meddling with war, I will only parade you upon the scaffold as a reprieved criminal. Bring hither a cord," called D'Aulnay, "and noose it over this lady's head." Edelwald raged in a hopeless tearing at his bonds. The guards seized him, but he struggled with unconquered strength to reach and protect his lady. Father Vincent de Paris had taken his capote and sandals at Jean le Prince's hint, and entered the tower. He clothed himself behind one of the screens of the hall, and thought his absence short, but during that time Marie was put upon the finished scaffold. A skulking reluctant soldier of D'Aulnay's led her by a cord. She walked the long rough planks erect. Her garrison to a man looked down, as they did at funerals, and Edelwald sobbed in his fight against the guards, the tears starting from under his eyelids as he heard her foot-fall pass near him. Back and forth she trod, and D'Aulnay watched the spectacle. Her garrison felt her degradation as she must feel their death. The grizzled lip of Glaud Burge moved first to comfort her.

"My lady, though our hands be tied, we make our military salute to you," he said.

"Fret not, my lady," said Renot Babinet.

"Edelwald can turn all these mishaps into a song, my lady," declared Jean le Prince. Marie had that sensation of lost identity which has confused us all. In her walk she passed the loops dangling ready for her men. A bird, poised for one instant on the turret, uttered a sweet long trill. She could hear the river. It was incredible that all those unknown faces should be swarming below her; that the garrison was obliged to stand tied; that Lady Dorinda had braved the rabble of soldiery and come out to wait weeping at the scaffold end. Marie looked at the row of downcast faces. The bond between these faithful soldiers and herself was that instant sublime.

"I crave pardon of you all," said Marie as she came back and the rustle of her gown again passed them, "for not knowing how to deal with the crafty of this world. My foolishness has brought you to this scaffold."

"No, my lady," said the men in full chorus.

"We desire nothing better, my lady," said Edelwald, "since your walking there has blessed it."

Father Vincent's voice from the tower door arrested the spectacle. His cowl was pushed back to his shoulders, baring the astonishment of his lean face.

"This is the unworthiest action of your life, my son De Charnisay," he denounced, shaking his finger and striding down at the governor, who owned the check by a slight grimace.

"It is enough," said D'Aulnay. "Let the scaffold now be cleared for the men."

He submitted with impatience to a continued parley with the Capuchin. Father Vincent de Paris was angry. And constantly as D'Aulnay walked from him he zealously followed.

The afternoon sunlight sloped into the walls, leaving a bank of shadow behind the timbered framework, which extended an etching of itself toward the esplanade. The lengthened figures of soldiers passed also in cloudy images along the broken ground, for a subaltern's first duty had been to set guards upon the walls. The new master of Fort St. John was now master of all southern and western Acadia; but he had heard nothing which secured him against La Tour's return with fresh troops.

"My friends," said D'Aulnay, speaking to the garrison, "this good friar persuades in me more softness than becomes a faithful servant of the king. One of your number I will reprieve."

"Then let it be Jean le Prince," said Edelwald, speaking for the first time to D'Aulnay de Charnisay. "The down has not yet grown on the lad's lip."

"But I pardon him," continued the governor, "on condition that he hangs the rest of you."

"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou art the only man on earth I would choke with a rope."

"Will no one be reprieved?"

D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.

"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics, Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of this fort."

The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donnÉ. These never came from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind for the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the entire company.

Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his guest into the fortress.

The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had shown favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donnÉ and two companions.

The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with heavenly authority.

"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and Monsieur Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed, guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint—you can move D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."

A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy. Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?—the permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God hold in His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.

During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.

There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and lifted their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor to man; but they could die with Edelwald.

The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.

"I will save them—I will save them! My brave Edelwald—all my brave soldiers shall not die!—Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I cannot see them any more!"