ack to Mont-Louis. They
left their hotel in Paris. I wrote imploring him to hold the estates. My
messages were returned. I don't know how he got money enough to
emigrate. But emigrate they did; avoiding Castorland, where the
Saint-Michels, who brought her up, lived in comfort, and might have
comforted her, and where I could have made her life easy. He probably
dragged her through depths of poverty, before they joined a company
bound for the Indiana Territory, where the Pigeon Roost settlement was
planted. I have seen old Saint-Michel work at clearing, and can imagine
the Marquis de Ferrier sweating weakly while he chopped trees. It is a
satisfaction to know they had Ernestine with them. De Ferrier might have
plowed with Eagle," said the count hotly. "He never hesitated to make
use of her."

While I had been living a monk's studious, well-provided life, was she
toiling in the fields? I groaned aloud.

De Chaumont dropped his head on his breast.

"It hurts me more than I care to let anybody but you know, Lazarre. If I
hadn't received that letter I should have avoided you. I wish you had
saved Paul. I would adopt him."

"I think not, my dear count."

"Nonsense, boy! I wouldn't let you have him."

"You have a child."

"Her husband has her. But let us not pitch and toss words. No use
quarreling over a dead boy. What right have you to Eagle's child?"

"Not your right of faithful useful friendship. Only my own right."

"What's that?"

"Nothing that she ever admitted."

"I was afraid of you," said De Chaumont, "when you flowered out with old
Du Plessy, like an heir lost in emigration and found again. You were a
startling fellow, dropping on the Faubourg; and anything was possible
under the Empire. You know I never believed the dauphin nonsense, but a
few who remembered, said you looked like the king. You were the king to
her; above mating with the best of the old nobility. She wouldn't have
married you."

"Did she ever give you reason to think she would marry you?"

"She never gave me reason to think she would marry anybody. But what's
the use of groaning? There's distraction abroad. I took the trails to
see you, when I heard you were with the troops on Champlain. I shall be
long in France. What can I do for you, my boy?"

"Nothing, count. You have already done much."

"She had a foolish interest in you. The dauphin!--Too good to sit at
table with us, you raw savage!--Had to be waited on by old Jean! And she