his lady murmur over the wretched
little outcast, as she always murmured to ailing creatures,--

"Let mother help you."

I.

AN ACADIAN FORTRESS.

At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and
tide-terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon
the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy,
subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on
the visible world. The forest on the west was yet too bare of leaf buds
to shut away sunset.

A month later the headlands would be lined distinctly against a blue and
quickening sky by freshened air and light and herbage. Two centuries and
a half later, long streaks of electric light would ripple on that
surface, and great ships stand at ease there, and ferry-boats rush back
and forth. But in this closing dusk it reflected only the gray and
yellow vaporous breath of April, and shaggy edges of a wilderness. The
high shores sank their shadows farther and farther from the water's
edge.

Fort St. John was built upon a gradual ascent of rocks which rose to a
small promontory on the south side of the river. There were four
bastions guarded with cannon, the northeast bastion swelling above its
fellows in a round turret topped with battlements. On this tower the
flag of France hung down its staff against the evening sky, for there
was scarcely any motion of the air. That coast lay silent like a
pictured land, except a hint of falls above in the river. It was ebb
tide; the current of the St. John set out toward the sea instead of
rushing back on its own channel; and rocks swallowed at flood now broke
the surface.

A plume of smoke sprang from one bastion, followed by the rolling
thunder of a cannon shot. From a small ship in the bay a gun replied to
this salute. She stood, gradually clear of a headland, her sails
hanging torn and one mast broken, and sentinel and cannoneer in the
bastion saw that she was lowering a boat. They called to people in the
fortress, and all voices caught the news:--

"Madame has come at last!"

Life stirred through the entire inclosure with a jar of closing doors
and running feet.

Though not a large fortification, St. John was well and compactly built
of cemented stone. A row of hewed log-barracks stood against the
southern wall, ample for all the troops La Tour had been able to muster
in prosperous times. There was a stone vault for ammunition. A well, a
mil