le, but she must work it out. There was the
one great fact: her husband had escaped.

"You will do all you can do, your excellency?" she said.

"Indeed, madame, I have done all I can," he said. With impulse she
caught his hand and kissed it. A minute afterwards she was gone with
Maurice Joval, who had orders to bring her to the abbe's house--that,
and no more.

The governor, left alone, looked at the hand that she had kissed and
said: "Well, well, I am but a fool still. Yet--a woman in a million!" He
took out his watch. "Too late," he added. "Poor lady!"

A few minutes afterwards Jessica met the abbe on his own doorstep.
Maurice Joval disappeared, and the priest and the woman were alone
together. She told him what had just happened.

"There is some mystery," she said, pain in her voice. "Tell me, has my
husband been retaken?"

"Madame, he has."

"Is he in danger?"

The priest hesitated, then presently inclined his head in assent.

"Once before I talked with you," she said, "and you spoke good things.
You are a priest of God. I know that you can help me, or Count Frontenac
would not have sent me to you. Oh, will you take me to my husband?"

If Count Frontenac had had a struggle, here was a greater. First, the
man was a priest in the days when the Huguenots were scattering to the
four ends of the earth. The woman and her husband were heretics, and
what better were they than thousands of others? Then, Sainte-Helene had
been the soldier-priest's pupil. Last of all, there was Iberville, over
whom this woman had cast a charm perilous to his soul's salvation. He
loved Iberville as his own son. The priest in him decided against
the woman; the soldier in him was with Iberville in this event--for a
soldier's revenge was its mainspring. But beneath all was a kindly soul
which intolerance could not warp, and this at last responded.

His first words gave her a touch of hope. "Madame," he said, "I know not
that aught can be done, but come."

CHAPTER XXII

FROM TIGER'S CLAW TO LION'S MOUTH

Every nation has its traitors, and there was an English renegade soldier
at Quebec. At Iberville's suggestion he was made one of the guards of
the prison. It was he that, pretending to let Gering win his confidence,
at last aided him to escape through the narrow corner-door of his cell.

Gering got free of the citadel--miraculously, as he thought; and,
striking off from the road, began to make his way by a roundabout to the