down, was banded in a league of folly.
"Resist? Of course I shall resist! My men are few enough, Father;
but I beg you to dismiss the notion that Fort Amitie is garrisoned by
cowards."

"I will stay with you then," said the Jesuit. "I may be useful, in
many ways. But mademoiselle will take my place in the boat and
escape to Montreal."

"I also stay," answered Diane simply.

"Excuse me, but there is like to be serious work. They bring the
Iroquois with them, besides Indians from the West." Father Launoy
spoke as one reasoning with a child.

Diane drew a small pistol from her bodice. "I have thought of that,
you see."

"But M. de Noel--" He swung round upon the Commandant,
expostulating.

"In a few hours," said the Commandant, meeting his eyes with a smile,
"New France will have ceased to be. I have no authority to force my
child to endure what I cannot endure myself. She has claimed a
promise of me, and I have given it."

The priest stepped back a pace, wondering. Swiftly before him passed
a vision of the Intendant's palace at Quebec, with its women and riot
and rottenness. His hand went up to his eyes, and under the shade of
it he looked upon father and daughter--this pair of the old
_noblesse_, clean, comely, ready for the sacrifice. What had New
France done for these that they were cheerful to die for her?
She had doled them out poverty, and now, in the end, betrayal; she
had neglected her children for aliens, she had taken their revenues
to feed extortioners and wantons, and now in the supreme act of
treachery, herself falling with them, she turned too late to read in
their eyes a divine and damning love. There all the while she had
lived--the true New France, loyally trusted, innocently worshipped.
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." . . .
Father Launoy lowered his gaze to the floor. He had looked and
learned why some nations fall and others worthily endure.

All that night the garrison had slept by their arms, until with the
first streak of day the drums called them out to their alarm-post.

Diane stood on the _terre-plein_ watching the sunrise. As yet the
river lay indistinct, a broad wan-coloured band of light stretching
away across the darkness. The outwork on the slope beneath her was a
formless shadow astir with smaller shadows equally formless.
She heard the tread of feet on the wooden platform, the clink of
side-arms and accoutrements, the soft thud of ramr