ry of his first fight on the St.
Lawrence.

It was a brave story of ambuscade and battle; and it was full of the
dark of night and the red flash of muskets and the stealth and
treachery of the Iroquois soul. When he reached the tale of the
captured Mohawk, who sat against a tree with a ball in his lungs, to
the last refusing the sacrament, and dying like a chief with the death
song on his lips, Danton was leaning forward, breathless and eager,
hanging on his words. The maid's eyes, too, were moist. Then they
talked on, Danton asking boyish questions, and Father Claude starting
over and again on a narrative of the wonderful conversion of the Huron
drunkard, Heroukiki, who, in his zeal,--and here Menard always swept
in with a new story, which left the priest adrift in the eddies of the
conversation. At last, when they rose, and the dusk was settling over
the trees, the maid was laughing with gentle good fellowship.

While they were eating, the _voyageurs_ had brought the canoe a short
way up the bank, resting it, bottom up, on large stones brought from
the shore. Underneath was a soft cot of balsam; over the canoe were
blankets, hanging on both sides to the ground. Then Mademoiselle said
good-night, with a moment's lingering on the word, and a wistful note
in her voice that brought perhaps more sympathy than had the sad eyes
of the morning. For after all she was only a girl, and hers was a
brave little heart.

The three men lay on the slope with hardly a word, looking at the
river, now shining like silver through the trees. This new turn in the
life of the party was not as yet to be taken familiarly. Father Claude
withdrew early to his meditations. Menard stretched out on his back,
his hands behind his head, gazing lazily at the leaves overhead, now
hanging motionless from the twigs.

Danton was sitting up, looking about, and running the young reeds
through his fingers.

"Danton," Menard said, after a long silence, "I suppose you know that
we have something of a problem on our hands."

Danton looked over the river.

"What have you thought about Mademoiselle?"

"I don't understand."

"Father Claude and I have been talking this evening about her. I have
thought that she does not look any too strong for a hard journey of a
hundred and more leagues."

"She has little colour," said Danton, cautiously.

"It seems to me, Danton, that you can help us."

"How?"

"What seems to you the cause of the trouble?"

"W