cloak, Marie again ran up to
the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and
brooding.

"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my
soul a long-felt itch."

When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with
astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships,
and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of
embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from
the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when
the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home
to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and
Edelwald's songs--of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy
glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World,
wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.

D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a
second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and
hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on
the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little
scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and
earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and
careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.

At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices
moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the
suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night
and for early action.

Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met
her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant
hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might
see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The
sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.

"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to
you before this affair begins."

The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a
half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none
very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were
black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and
hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked
youth. The roster of their familiar names