trap and drawn danger on a woman was poignant; the candle
had caught him like a moth, and a Sioux would keenly follow. Still, no
lightest step betrayed the Sioux's knowledge of his whereabouts. A
long time passed before he relaxed to an easy posture and turned to the
interior of the cave.

The drip of a veiled water-vein at the rear made him conscious of
thirst, but the sleeping woman was in the way of his creeping to take
a drink. Wrapped in a fur robe, she lay breathing like an infant,
white-skinned, full-throated, and vigorous, a woman older than himself.

[Illustration: She lay breathing like an infant 026]

The consequences of her waking did not threaten him as perilous. Without
reasoning, he was convinced that a woman who lay down to sleep beside
a burning candle in this wild place would make no outcry when she
awoke and found the light had drawn instead of kept away possible
cave-inhabitants. Day grew beyond the low sill and thinned obscurity
around him, showing the swerve of the roof to a sloping shelf.
Perspiration cooled upon him and he shivered. A fire and a breakfast
would have been good things, which he had often enjoyed in danger.
Rowing all night, and landing cannon at the end of it, and running a
league or more for life, exhausted a man.

The woman stirred, and the young voyageur thought of dropping his knife
back into its sheath. At the slight click she sat up, drawing in her
breath.

He whispered: "Do not be afraid. I have not come in here to hurt you."

She was staring at him, probably taking him for some monster of the
dark.

"Have you anything here to eat?"

The woman resumed her suspended breath, and answered in the same guarded
way, and in French like his: "Yes. I come to this part of the island so
of ten that I have put bread and meat and candles in the cave. How did
you find it? No one but myself knew about it."

"I saw the candle-light."

"The candle was to keep off evil spirits. It has been blown out. Where
did you come from?"

"From St. Joseph Island last night with the English. They have taken the
island by surprise."

She unexpectedly laughed in a repressed gurgle, as a faun or other woods
creature might have laughed at the predicaments of men.

"I am thinking of the stupid American soldiers--to lie asleep and let
the British creep in upon them. But have you seen my cow? I searched
everywhere, until the moon went down and I was tired to death, for my
cow."

"No, I saw no