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Nor were the outlying French themselves safe from him. News arrived that he intended an attack upon a château called Chatillard farther up the river but within the English lines. A band of the New England rangers, led by Willet, was sent to drive him off, and to destroy the Ojibway pest, if possible. Robert, Tayoga and Zeb Crane went with him. They arrived at the château just before twilight.
"In that case," said the hunter with his absolute belief in all that Tayoga said, "we can settle ourselves for quite a wait." They relapsed into silence and Robert began to look at the light that shone from the bedroom of M. de Chatillard, the only light in the house now visible.
"Come into the Seigneur's room," said Father Drouillard, and Robert and Willet followed him into the old man's chamber. M. de Chatillard lay silent and rigid. He, too, had gone on the longest of all journeys. "His soul fled," said Father Drouillard, "when the battle outside was at its height, but his mind then was not here.
Luc for whom the ancient M. de Chatillard had taken him, St. Luc with whom he must have some blood tie. Though it was now far beyond the time for the rising of the sun, the day was still dark, heavy with clouds, and now and then a puff of rain was blown in the faces of the waiting men, though few took notice.
A few lights shone in the Château de Chatillard, but Willet and his rangers stood in black gloom. Almost at their feet the great St. Lawrence flowed in its mighty channel, a dim blue under the dusky sky. Nothing was visible there save the slow stream, majestic, an incalculable weight of water. Nothing appeared upon its surface, and the far shore was lost in the night.
He was an old, old man between ninety and a hundred, and Willett was right in saying that he might well pass on before the fate of Quebec was decided. Robert was sure that it was going to fall, and M. de Chatillard at the end of a long, long life would be spared a great blow. But what a life! What events had been crowded into his three generations of living!
Willet's troops numbered about forty men, and, respecting the aged M. de Chatillard, who was quite ill and in bed, they did not for the present go into the house, eating their own supper on the long, narrow lawn, which was thick with dwarfed and clipped pines and other shrubbery. But they lighted no fires, and they kept very quiet, since they wished for Tandakora to walk into an ambush.
The four entered and stood within the light shed by two tall candles. The old man gazed at them a long time in silence, but finally he said: "And so the English have come at last." "We're not English, M. de Chatillard," said Willet, "we're Americans, Bostonnais, as you call us." "It is the same. You are but the children of the English and you fight together against us.
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