ed back along it that he came in sight of Boisveyrac as
the bell in the little chapel of the Seigniory began to ring the
Angelus. Its note came floating down the river distinct above the
sound of the falls. He bared his head, and repeated his _Aves_ duly.

"But all the same," he added, working out the train of his thoughts
as he gazed across the deserted harvest-fields, impoverished by
tree-stumps, to the dense forest behind the Chateau, "let God
confound the English, and New France shall belong to a new _noblesse_
that have learned, as the old will not, to lay their hands on her
wealth."

CHAPTER XII.

THE WHITE TUNIC.

John a Cleeve lay on his bed in the guest-room of the Seigniory,
listening to the sound of the distant falls.

That song was his anodyne. All day he had let it lull his
conscience, rousing himself irritably as from a drugged sleep to
answer the questions put to him by Dominique or the priest.
Dominique's questions had been few and easily answered, the most of
them relating to the battle.

"A brother of mine was there beyond doubt," he had wound up
wistfully. "He is a bateau-man, by name Baptiste Guyon. But of
course you will not know him?"

"Ils m'ont tire pour la battue, moi," John had fenced him off with a
feeble joke and a feeble laugh. (Why should he feel ashamed?
Was this not war, and he a prisoner tricking his captors?)

But the priest had been a nuisance. Heaven be praised for his going!

And now the shadows were closing upon the room, and in the hush of
sunset the voice of the waters had lifted its pitch and was humming
insistently, with but a semitone's fall and rise. During the
priest's exhortations he had turned his face to the wall; but now for
an hour he had lain on his other side, studying the rafters, the
furniture, the ray of sunlight creeping along the floor-boards and up
the dark, veneered face of an _armoire_ built into the wall.
Behind the doors of it hung Sergeant Barboux's white tunic; and
sometimes it seemed to him that the doors were transparent and he saw
it dangling like a grey ghost within.

It was to avoid this sight that he had turned to the wall when the
priest began to interrogate him. Heavens! how incurably, after all,
he hated these priests!

Menehwehna had answered most of the questions, standing by the bed's
foot: and Menehwehna was seated there still in the dusk.

How many lies had Menehwehna told? John himself had told none,
unless it