would
have been in a like case, talk and nothing more. The fort could not
hold out an hour, he well knew. Then what? Ah, he but too well realized
the result.

Resistance would inflame the English soldiers and madden the Indians.
There would be a massacre, and the belts of savages would sag with
bloody scalps. He shrugged his shoulders and felt a chill creep up his
back.

The first thing M. Roussillon did was to see Father Beret and take
counsel of him; then he hurried home to dig a great pit under his
kitchen floor in which he buried many bales of fur and all his most
valuable things. He worked like a giant beaver all night long. Meantime
Father Beret went about over the town quietly notifying the inhabitants
to remain in their houses until after the fort should surrender, which
he was sure would happen the next day.

"You will be perfectly safe, my children," he said to them. "No harm
can come to you if you follow my directions."

Relying implicitly upon him, they scrupulously obeyed in every
particular.

He did not think it necessary to call at Roussillon place, having
already given M. Roussillon the best advice he could command.

Just at the earliest break of day, while yet the gloom of night
scarcely felt the sun's approach, a huge figure made haste along the
narrow streets in the northern part of the town. If any person had been
looking out through the little holes, called windows, in those silent
and rayless huts, it would have been easy to recognize M. Roussillon by
his stature and his gait, dimly outlined as he was. A thought, which
seemed to him an inspiration of genius, had taken possession of him and
was leading him, as if by the nose, straight away to Hamilton's lines.
He was freighted with eloquence for the ear of that commander, and as
he strode along facing the crisp morning air he was rehearsing under
his breath, emphasizing his periods in tragic whispers with sweeping
gestures and liberal facial contortions. So absorbed was he in his
oratorical soliloquy that he forgot due military precaution and ran
plump into the face of a savage picket guard who, without respect for
the great M. Roussillon's dignity, sprang up before him, grunted
cavernously, flourished a tomahawk and spoke in excellent and
exceedingly guttural Indian:

"Wah, surrender!"

It is probable that no man ever complied with a modest request in a
more docile spirit than did M. Roussillon upon that occasion. In fact
his promptness