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There are two of our men that they must have made prisoners, the M'sieu at the fort who has the pretty wife, and young Chauvin" and he paused, as if there was more to say. "Wounded?" He shook his head sadly. "Dead?" Destournier's breath came with a gasp. "Both dead, M'sieu, but strange, neither has been scalped." "Let us push on," exclaimed Destournier sadly. They followed the trail.
"Oh, that is M. Destournier's ward. Surely, you saw her when you first came here, though she was but a child then. A foundling, it seems. Good Father Jamay was quite urgent that she should be sent home, and spend some years in a convent." "And she refused? She looks like it. Oh, yes, I remember the child." "Beauty is a great snare where there is a wayward will," sighed the devoted Hélène.
"We are alike in that," he made answer. He saw Wanamee presently. "She goes from one dying fit to another. Madawando brings her back. But if he is dead, M'sieu, why should they not let her join him?" Would she be happier in that great unknown land with him. What was there here for her? And some way he felt in part responsible. He had risked his life to save Destournier's property.
He managed to repair the damages, and picked up the plums he had not trodden upon, that were yielding their wine-like fragrance to the air. "Which way do you go, M'sieu?" she asked, with unconscious hauteur. "Why to M. Destournier's. I called on miladi, and she sent me to find you in some wood, she hardly knew where. And I have brought you safely back."
Quebec was beginning to look quite a town. Destournier's house commanded his settlement, which was more strongly fortified with a higher palisade, over which curious thorn vines were growing for protection. He had a fine wheat field, and some tobacco. Of Indian corn a great waving regiment planted only two rows thick so as to give no chance for skulking marauders.
They will look about for more fuel to add to the flames. So we must decide. I cannot risk my own liberty for months for nothing. It will not make M. Destournier's death pang easier." "Oh, go away, go away!" she almost shrieked, but the sorrow in her voice took off the harshness. "Let me think. I do not love you! I might run away. I might drown myself. I might not be able to keep my promise."
I have brought about peace between warring tribes. I have prevented war. I will go to the Hurons, and try for M. Destournier's liberty. From what De Loie said, they mean to sacrifice the men to-morrow. There are horrid, agonizing tortures before death comes. If you will promise to marry me I will go at once and do my utmost to rescue him, them." "And if you fail?"
"I wonder," she said one day, as she sat on the rocks, leaning against Destournier's knee, the soft wind playing through the silken tendrils of her hair "I wonder if you should die whether I could be like miladi, and want the room dark and have every one go in the softest moccasins, and have headaches and the sound of any one's voice pierce through you like a knife. It would be terrible."
Madame Destournier's health was precarious, and she had little idea of what was necessary for a girl, having been convent-trained herself. Now that Madame de Champlain had gone there was no real companionship for Rose, who was surely outgrowing her childish fancies. "How would you like it, Thérèse?" asked her mother.
She was not a little horrified by Destournier's curious familiarity with God and heaven, as it seemed to her. Rose understood almost intuitively that it terrified her, that it seemed a sacrilege, though she would not have known what the word meant. So she said very little about it it was a beautiful land beyond the sky where people went when they died.