y up from
Montreal before everyone was asking for you. La Grange had a letter
from her father saying that she was with you, and he's been in a bad
way. He says that he was to have married her, and that you've got away
with her. It serves him right, the beast. One night, at La Famine, he
was drunk, and he came around to all of us reading that letter at the
top of his voice and swearing to kill you the moment he sees you. He's
been talking a good deal about that."

"She is here, asleep."

"Thank God."

"Where is La Grange now?"

"He's over at Frontenac. He got into trouble before we left La Famine.
He's drinking hard now, you know. He had command of a company that was
working on the stockades, and he made such a muss of it that his
sergeant had to take hold and handle it to get the work done at all.
You can imagine what bad feeling that made in his company. Played the
devil with his discipline. Well, he took it like a child. But that
night, when he got a little loose on his legs, he hunted up the
sergeant and made him fight. The fellow wouldn't until La Grange came
at him with his sword, but then he cracked his head with a musket."

"Hurt him?"

"Yes. They took him up to Frontenac. He's in the hospital now, but
it's pretty generally understood that d'Orvilliers won't let him go
out until the Governor gets back from Niagara. He's well enough
already, they say. It's hard on the sergeant, too; no one blames
him."

Du Peron looked around and saw Teganouan lying near.

"Who's this Indian?" he asked in a low tone.

"He is with me. A mission Indian."

"Does he know French? Has he understood us?"

"I don't know. I suppose so. Here is Father Claude de Casson. You
remember him, don't you?"

"Yes, indeed."

The Lieutenant rose to greet the priest, and then the three sat
together.

"You asked me about the fight, didn't you, Menard? I don't seem able
to hold to a subject very long to-night. We struck out from La Famine
on the morning of the twelfth of July. You know the trail that leads
south from La Famine? We followed that."

Menard smiled at the leaping fire.

"Don't laugh, Menard; that was no worse than what we've done from the
start. The Governor never thought but what we'd surprise them as
much on that road as on another. And after all, we won, though it did
look bad for a while. There was a time, at the beginning of the
fight,--well, I'm getting ahead of myself again. We were in fairly
good order. Callie