bearers
shall be of my choosing."

Diane laid a hand on her uncle's arm. "He is dead," said she.
"What matters it?" She did not understand this dispute. "Perhaps if
I promise M. le General that these men shall return to him when they
have laid my father in the chapel--"

The General--a tall, lean, horse-faced man with a shrewd and not
unkindly eye--yielded the point at once. "Willingly, mademoiselle,
and with all the respect an enemy may pay to your sorrow."

He ordered the men to give place to the new bearers.

In the chapel Diane sank on her knees, but not to pray--rather to
escape the consolations of the two priests and be alone with her
thoughts. And her thoughts were not of her father. The stroke had
fallen; but not yet could she feel the pain. He was happy; he alone
of them all had kept his quiet vow, and died disdaining defeat;
whereas she--ah, there lay the terrible thought!--she had not merely
failed, had not been overpowered. In the crisis, beside her father's
corpse, she had played the traitress to her resolve.

The two priests moved about the body, arranging it, fetching
trestles, draperies, and candles for the _lit de parade_, always with
stealthy glances at the bowed figure in the shadow just within the
door. But she knelt on, nor lifted her face.

In the sunlit courtyard without the two commanders were still
disputing. M. Etienne flatly refused to yield up his sword,
maintaining that he had never surrendered, had agreed to no terms of
capitulation; that the redcoats had swarmed over his walls in the
temporary absence of their defenders, gathered at the gateway to
parley under a flag of truce, and should be drawn off at once.

The mischief was, he could not be gainsaid. Major Etherington
explained--at first in English, to his General, and again, at his
General's request, in the best French he could command, for the
benefit of all, that he had indeed heard the recall blown, and had
with difficulty drawn off his men from the scaling-ladders,
persuading them (as he himself was persuaded) that the fort had
surrendered. He knew nothing of the white flag at the gateway, but
had formed his conclusions from the bugle-calls and the bare
flagstaff above the tower.

"Nevertheless, we had not capitulated," persisted M. Etienne.

The Major continued that, albeit he had tried his best, the Indians
were not to be restrained. They had poured into the fort, and,
although he had obeyed the bugles a