er in my hands."

"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to
do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to
see the signal."

"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did
all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there
to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and
perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."

"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to
be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the
wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp
being on another side."

Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.

"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."

She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced
even that.

"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"

"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."

"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much
as a handful of land?"

"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."

"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated
Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a
future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and
on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had
worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should
now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could
demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of
Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared
to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was
certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France
behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could
see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere
employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of
Penobscot.

The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what
day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light
breaking from the east.

Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once
more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line
of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in
the night, and