t
shining with emotion. God help him! This child--she could be little
more--was worshipping him for a hero!

"Nay, sir, give it to me!" cried the Commandant, stooping by the
quay's edge. "I shall esteem it an honour to grasp the hand of one
who comes from Fort Carillon--who was wounded for France in her hour
of victory. Your name, my friend?--for the messengers who brought
word of you yesterday had not heard it, or perhaps had forgotten."

"My name is a Cleeve, monsieur."

"A Clive? a Clive? It is unknown to me, and yet it has a good sound,
and should belong to _un homme Men ne_?" He turned inquiringly
towards his brother, a mild, elderly man with a scholar's stoop and a
face which assorted oddly with his uniform of captain of militia,
being shrivelled as parchment and snuff-dried and abstracted in
expression as though he had just lifted his eyes from a book.
"A Clive, Etienne. From what province should our friend derive?"

M. Etienne's eyes--they were, in fact, short-sighted--seemed to
search inwardly for a moment before he answered:

"There was a family of that name in the Quercy; so late, I think, as
1650. I had supposed it to be extinct. It bore arms counterpaly
argent and gules, a canton ermine--"

"My brother, sir," the Commandant interrupted, "is a famous
genealogist. Do you accept this coat-of-arms he assigns to you?"

"If M. le Commandant will excuse me--"

"Eh, eh?--an awkward question, no doubt, to put to many a young man
of family now serving with the colours?" The Commandant chuckled
knowingly. "But I have an eye, sir, for nice shades, and an ear too.
_Verbum sapienti satis_. A sergeant, they tell me--and of the
Bearnais; but until we have cured you, sir, and the active list again
claims you, you are Monsieur a Clive and my guest. We shall talk,
so, upon an easier footing. Tut-tut! I have eyes in my head, I
repeat. And this Indian of yours--how does he call himself?"

"Menehwehna, monsieur. He is an Ojibway."

"And you and he have come by way of the Wilderness? Now what puzzles
me--"

"Papa!" interposed the girl gently, laying a hand on her father's
sleeve; "ought we not to get him ashore before troubling him with all
these questions? He is suffering, I think."

"You say well, my child. A thousand pardons, sir. Here, Bedard!
Jeremie!"

But it was Menehwehna who, with inscrutable face, helped John ashore,
suffering the others only to hold the canoe steady. John tried ha