uation.

Father Holland's prompt offer to have the rough box examined satisfied
the searchers, and there were no further demands.

"Oh," said the Englishman, taken aback, "I beg your pardon, sir! No
offence meant."

"No offence," replied the priest, reseating himself. "_Benedicite_----"

"Sittin' on the coffin!" blurted out the voice of an English youth as
the weight of the priest again came down heavily on my prison; and again
I breathed easily.

"Come on, men!" shouted Hamilton, apprehensive of more curiosity. "We're
wasting time! He may be escaping by the basement window!"

"_Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit; surge, amica mea, et
veni!_" droned the priest, and the whole company clattered downstairs.

"Quick!--Out with you!" commanded Father Holland. "Speed to y'r heels,
and blessing on the last o' ye!"

I dashed down the stairs and was bolting through the doorway when some
one shouted, "There he is!"

"Run, Gillespie!" cried some one else--one of our men, I suppose--and I
had plunged into the storm and raced for the ladders at the rear
stockades with a pack of pursuers at my heels. The snow drifts were in
my favor, for with my moccasins, I leaped lightly forward, while the
booted soldiers floundered deep. I eluded my pursuers and was half-way
up a ladder when a soldier's head suddenly appeared above the wall on
the other side. Then a bayonet prodded me in the chest and I fell
heavily backwards to the ground.

* * * * *

I was captured.

That is all there is to say. No man dilates with pleasure over that part
of his life when he was vanquished. It is not pleasant to have weapons
of defence wrested from one's hands, to feel soldiers standing upon
one's wrists and rifling pockets.

It is hard to feel every inch the man on the horizontal.

In truth, when the soldiers picked me up without ceremony, or
gentleness, and bundling me up the stairs of the main hall, flung me
into a miserable pen, with windows iron-barred to mid-sash, I was but a
sorry hero. My tormentors did not shackle me; I was spared that
humiliation.

"There!" exclaimed a Hudson's Bay man, throwing lantern-light across the
dismal low roof as I fell sprawling into the room. "That'll cool the
young hot-head," and all the French soldiers laughed at my discomfiture.

They chained and locked the door on the outside. I heard the soldiers'
steps reverberating through the empty passages, and was alone in