" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's
humanity was developed.

"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I
would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say
that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes
then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get
him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'
said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it,
and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with
him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:--

"'Glaud Burge!'

"'Jean le Prince!'

"'Renot Babinet!'

"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'

"And so on until Francois Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over
his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."

Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.

"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt
death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."

Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail
on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so
little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le
Rossignol; who was gone.

Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction
for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of
Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had
disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree
or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find
out.

Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for
her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van
Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.
With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***

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