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Nicholas Denys denied him men. There was no hope of rescue for Fort St. John. He was waiting in the outpost for his ship to bring him home the home besieged by D'Aulnay. The blood returned to her face with a rush, her mouth quivered, and she sobbed two or three times without tears. La Tour could have taken her in his arms. But Edelwald folded his empty arms across his breast.
Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him out to pay court to me? Beat me for it.
As she looked at Edelwald, the comfort of having him there softened the resolute lines of her face into childlike curves. Being about the same age she felt always a youthful comradeship with him. Her eyes again filled. "Edelwald, we have lost ten men." "D'Aulnay has doubtless lost ten or twenty times as many." "What are men to him? Cattle, which he can buy. But to us, they are priceless.
Sometimes he quavered a plaintive remark on society as he found it, and sometimes he stretched up his neck to its longest length, a sinuous white serpent, and gazed wrathfully at the paneled ceiling. The firelight revealed him at this moment a bundle of glistening satin, wrapped in sleep and his wings from the alarms of war. Marie stood at the hearth to receive Edelwald.
"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.
Edelwald, our only officer, is against surrender, because he, like yourselves, would give the greater for the less, which I cannot allow." "My lady," spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we think Edelwald is right.
"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added Lady Dorinda. "I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a troubadour." "The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this wilderness."
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.
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!
When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land. From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood.
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