our field." "Yes, Captain Vergor,
your grain as soon as we have gathered ours in." "It shall be done,
captain."

Jacques had heard of Vergor. A few years before, Vergor had been put
under arrest for giving up Fort Beausejour, in Acadia, to the English
without firing a shot. The boy thought it strange that such a man
should be put in charge of any part of the defensive cordon around
Quebec. But Vergor had a friend in the intendant Bigot, who knew
how to reinstate his disgraced favorites. The arriving cart drew the
captain's attention from his departing men. He smiled, his depressed
nose and fleshy lips being entirely good-natured.

"A load of provisions, and a recruit for my company," he said.

"Monsieur the captain needs recruits," observed Jacques.

"Society is what I need most," said Vergor. "And from appearances I
am going to have it at my supper which the cook is about to set before
me."

"I think I will stay all night here," said Jacques.

"You overwhelm me," responded Vergor.

"There are so many empty tents."

"Fill as many of them as you can," suggested Vergor. "You are
doubtless much away from your mother, inspecting the troops; but what
will madame say if you fail to answer at her roll call to-night?"

"Nothing. I should be in my father's tent at Montreal, if she had been
able to go when he was ordered back there."

"Who is your father?"

"Le Gardeur de Repentigny."

Vergor drew his lips together for a soft whistle, as he rose to direct
the storing of his goods.

"It is a young general with whom I am to have the honor of messing. I
thought he had the air of camps and courts the moment I saw his head
over the side of the cart."

Many a boy secretly despises the man to whose merry insolence he
submits. But the young Repentigny felt for Vergor such contempt as
only an incompetent officer inspires.

No sentinels were stationed. The few soldiers remaining busied
themselves over their mess fires. Jacques looked down a cove not quite
as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any
surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with
a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line.
Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill now rotting below had once climbed
this rock. Rain had carried the earth from above in small cataracts
down its face, making a thin alluvial coating. A strip of land
separated the rock from the St. Lawrence, which looked wide and gra