were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet
followed.

Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be
chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictly guarded,
and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth.
Besides, if the fortress was to be surrendered, there was immediate
prospect of a voyage for all the household.

The dwarf's world was near the ground, to which the thinking of the tall
men and women around her scarcely stooped. But she seized on and weighed
and tried their thoughts, arriving at shrewd issues. Nobody had asked
her advice about the capitulation. Without asking anybody's advice she
decided that the Hollandais Van Corlaer and the Jesuit priest Father
Jogues would be wholesome checks upon D'Aulnay de Charnisay when her
lady opened the fort to him. The weather must have prevented Van Corlaer
from getting beyond the sound of cannon, and neither he nor the priest
could indifferently leave the lady of St. John to her fate, and Madame
Antonia would refuse to do it. Le Rossignol believed the party that had
set out early in the week must be encamped not far away.

Edelwald mounted a bastion with the sentinels. That weird light of the
moon which seems the faded and forgotten ghost of day, rested
everywhere. The shadow of the tower fell inward, and also partly covered
the front wall. This enchanted land of night cooled Edelwald. He threw
his arms upward with a passionate gesture to which the soldiers had
become accustomed in their experience of the young chevalier.

"What is that?" exclaimed the man nearest him, for there was disturbance
in the opposite bastion. Edelwald moved at once across the interval of
wall and found the sentinels in that bastion divided between laughter
and superstitious awe.

"She's out again," said one.

"Who is out?" demanded Edelwald.

"The little swan-riding witch."

"You have not let the dwarf scale this wall? If she could do that
unobserved, my men, we are lax."

"She is one who will neither be let nor hindered. We are scarce sure we
even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."

"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan
now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has
sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."

"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.

"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen i