n.

"Where is M. Giffard?" she cried. "Miladi is so frightened. She wants
him at once. Oh, wasn't it dreadful! Thank the saints you are safe!"

"Giffard!" He had caught two or three glimpses of him in the melee. "He
may be attending to the wounded. He is a brave fellow in an emergency. I
must find him."

He swallowed the brandy and water and rushed down to the improvised
hospital. A dozen or more were being fed and nursed by Wanamee and two
other Indian women. The priest, too, was kindly exhorting courage and
patience. Giffard was not here. No one had seen him. He ran over the
crusty, but trodden-down snow, stained here and there with blood. The
sun had risen gorgeously, and there was a decided balminess in the air.
He glanced at the insides of the huts. The furry skins had not been good
conductors of flames, and the snow on the roofs had saved them. Beside
the two dead Iroquois there was an Abenaqui woman and her child. In the
huts that were intact, the frightened women and children had huddled.
Some of the men were already appraising possible repairs.

"They went this way," announced an Algonquin, in his broken French. He
had been employed about the fort and found trusty.

The path was marked with blood and fragments of clothing, bags of maize,
that they had dropped in their flight--finding them a burthen. Here lay
an Iroquois with a broken leg, who was twisting himself along. The
Algonquin hit him a blow over the head with the stout club he carried.

"He will not get much further," he commented, as the Indian dropped over
motionless.

"Have you seen M. Giffard?" Destournier asked.

"_Non, non_. The men came back."

"He is not at the fort."

"Shall we follow on?"

Destournier nodded.

They heard a step crunching over the snow and waited breathlessly.

It was Jacques Roleau they saw as he came in sight, one of the workmen
at the fort. He gestured to them that all was right.

"They have fled, what was left of them," he explained. "I despatched two
wounded Iroquois that they had left behind. There are two of our men
that they must have made prisoners, the M'sieu at the fort who has the
pretty wife, and young Chauvin"--and he paused, as if there was more to
say.

"Wounded?"

He shook his head sadly.

"Dead?" Destournier's breath came with a gasp.

"Both dead, M'sieu, but strange, neither has been scalped."

"Let us push on," exclaimed Destournier sadly.

They followed the trail. After a short dis