re he had landed. In this venture little
could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard
outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned
clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went
close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his
outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst
from the soldier.

"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and
stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to
descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there
on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the
log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and
knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin
might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket
around him. The chorus of insect life and of water creatures, which had
scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes.
And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon
would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little
mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be
cloudy.

The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young
soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the
garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If
he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder.
There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels
recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances,
he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against
the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and
moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.

"Who goes there?" said a voice.

The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing
sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself
from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the
bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he
flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a
clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a
glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St.
John's gate. He heard another exclamation,--t