t a lot of his friends, and one of his cousins
from Levis. And they told him...."

"What did they tell him?" asked the three women, who had now abandoned
their work and gathered around the speaker.

"Well, you know all the boats were taken away from the other side of the
river, but these men were so frightened that they ran down the bank till
they came opposite the Isle of Orleans. Then making a kind of raft with
a few logs they got over to the Island. There they found boats which
took them to the city. And they immediately spread the news of what they
had seen."

"What had they seen?" queried the excited women. "You are provoking,
Matilde, with your long story."

"You will not believe me."

"I'll believe everything," said one.

"I'll believe nothing," said another.

"Never mind what we will believe. Only tell us what it is," said the
third.

"Well, they told Pierriche that these Bastonnais are terrible men, tall
and strong. They suffer neither cold nor heat. Nothing can hurt them,
neither powder, nor ball."

"And why not?"

"Because...."

Here the pretty housewife paused suddenly, and with a look of mingled
fear and surprise, pointed to the river. Her companions turned and saw a
light birch-bark canoe, shooting out from the opposite shore and
directed for mid-stream. Three men were in it.

"There!" said the first speaker. "Just what Pierriche said. Look at
them. Look especially at that tall man sitting in the stern. The boat is
approaching very quick. See, he raises his cap and salutes us."

"What a handsome fellow," said Marguerite.

"Yes, but look at his dress and that of his companions," exclaimed the
others.

"Just what Perriche said," repeated the first.

"They are devils, not men," cried out a second.

"Just what Pierriche said. They are clad in sheet-iron."

"Yes, that is true. Sheet-iron men!"

And the frightened women, leaving the clothes on the jetty, fled
precipitately up the bank.

The boat described a wide semi-circle in the river, and the young man
sitting at the stern swept the north shore with a field glass. It was
Cary Singleton, an officer of Morgan's riflemen, one of the chief corps
of Arnold's army. He had been sent to reconnoitre.

Morgan's riflemen were all tall, stalwart men from Virginia and
Maryland, and they were dressed in tunics of grey unbleached linen. The
French would say _vetus de toile_. But the panic of their sudden
arrival, at Levis, changed _toile_ into _