led at my footsteps; the woman gave a little cry, and Gabord's
hand went to his pistol. There was a wild sort of look in his face, as
though he could not trust his eyes. I took no notice of the menacing
pistol, but went straight to him and held out my hand.

"Gabord," said I, "you are not my jailer now."

"I'll be your guard to citadel," said he, after a moment's dumb
surprise, refusing my outstretched hand.

"Neither guard nor jailer any more, Gabord," said I seriously. "We've
had enough of that, my friend."

The soldier and the jailer had been working in him, and his fingers
trifled with the trigger. In all things he was the foeman first. But now
something else was working in him. I saw this, and added pointedly, "No
more cage, Gabord, not even for reward of twenty thousand livres and at
command of Holy Church."

He smiled grimly, too grimly, I thought, and turned inquiringly to
Babette. In a few words she told him all, tears dropping from her eyes.

"If you take him, you betray me," she said; "and what would Jean say, if
he knew?"

"Gabord," said I, "I come not as a spy; I come to seek my wife, and she
counts you as her friend. Do harm to me, and you do harm to her. Serve
me, and you serve her. Gabord, you said to her once that I was an
honourable man."

He put up his pistol. "Aho, you've put your head in the trap. Stir, and
click goes the spring."

"I must have my wife," I continued. "Shall the nest you helped to make
go empty?"

I worked upon him to such purpose that, all bristling with war at first,
he was shortly won over to my scheme, which I disclosed to him while the
wife made us a cup of coffee. Through all our talk Voban had sat eying
us with a covert interest, yet showing no excitement. He had been unable
to reach Alixe. She had been taken to the convent, and immediately
afterwards her father and brother had gone their ways--Juste to General
Montcalm, and the Seigneur to the French camp. Thus Alixe did not know
that I was in Quebec.

An hour after this I was marching, with two other men and Gabord, to the
Convent of the Ursulines, dressed in the ordinary costume of a French
soldier, got from the wife of Jean Labrouk. In manner and speech though
I was somewhat dull, my fellows thought, I was enough like a peasant
soldier to deceive them, and my French was more fluent than their own. I
was playing a desperate game; yet I liked it, for it had a fine spice of
adventure apart from the great matter