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It was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying D'Aulnay's gratitude. "The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree that doth best front the gates." "That hath no fit limbs," objected another. "He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first man.
The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his shoulder turned to the powder-house.
"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel." Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that kiss. "But there was that child!" he groaned. "That was not my child," said Marguerite. "The baby brought here with you!" "It was not mine." "Whose was it?" "It was a drunken soldier's.
The tall soldier went down to meet her, and paused, bareheaded, to make the salutation of a subaltern to his military superior. She responded with the same grave courtesy. But as he drew nearer she noticed him whitening through the dusk. "All has gone well, Klussman, at Fort St. John, since your lord left?" "Madame," he said with a stammer, "the storm made us anxious about you."
Port Royal sent out no ships except D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel. Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly, "Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay." "You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"
But have them out directly, Klussman. We must not be rigorous. Did they bear any papers?" "No, madame; and they said they had naught to do with D'Aulnay, but were on a mission to the Abenakis around Penobscot, and had lost their course and wandered here.
While Antonia continued her conference on the stone steps leading to the wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss stooped to its slope.
The soldiers about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face. "Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter denials, his suspicion leaped the settles.
Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with the turns and holding to the wall. "Wait for me," she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load.
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