is
scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.

"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and
whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against
the cannon with an oath.

"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de
Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter
in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man
who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with
Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"

Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--

"Tell not the whole fortress."

Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the
turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his
wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed
Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him
resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not
propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself
and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard
his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the
winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.

"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till
daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold
of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The
Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her
tears.

"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.

"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me
out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."

Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being
thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was
his portion in the world.

"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."

"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."

"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you
would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort,
at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."

"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"

"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."

"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one
would see me standing with a ladd