r had heard in time of his return to
the Mohawks.

At the bottom of her garden she rested her hands upon a gate in the low
stone wall. The mansion behind her was well ordered and prosperous. No
drop of milk was spilled in Antonia's domain without her knowledge. She
had noted, as she came down the path, how the cabbages were rounding
their delicately green spheres. Antonia was a housewife for whom maids
labored with zeal. She could manipulate so deftly the comfort-making
things of life. Neither sunset nor moonrise quite banished the dreamy
blue light on these rolling lands around the head-waters of the Hudson.
Across her tranquil commonplace happiness blew suddenly that ocean
breath from Fundy Bay; for the dwarf of Fort St. John, leading a white
waddling bird, whose feathers even in that uncertain light showed soil,
appeared from the screening masonry of the wall.

She stood still and looked at Antonia; and Antonia inside the gate
looked at her. That instant was a bubble full of revolving dyes. It
brought a thousand pictures to Antonia's sight. Thus silently had that
same dwarf with her swan appeared to a camp in the Acadian woods,
announcing trouble at Fort St. John.

Again Antonia lived through confusion which was like pillage of the
fort. Again she sat in her husband's tent, holding Marie's dying head on
her arm while grief worked its swift miracle in a woman formed to such
fullness of beauty and strength. Again she saw two graves and a long
trench made in the frontier graveyard for Marie and her officer Edelwald
and her twenty-three soldiers, all in line with her child. Once more
Antonia saw the household turn from that spot weeping aloud; and De
Charnisay's ships already sailing away with the spoil of the fort to
Penobscot; and his sentinels looking down from the walls of St. John.
She saw her husband dividing his own party, and sending all the men he
could spare to navigate La Tour's ship and carry the helpless women and
children to the head of Fundy Bay. All these things revolved before
her, in that bubble of an instant, before her own voice broke it,
saying,--

"Is this you, Le Rossignol?"

"Shubenacadie and I," responded the dwarf, lilting up sweetly.

"Where do you come from?" inquired Antonia, feeling the weirdness of her
visitor as she had never felt it in the hall at Fort St. John.

"Port Royal. I have come from Port Royal on purpose to speak with you."

"With me?"

"With you, Madame Antonia."