ower half of the window. "I would give my next year's trade to
bring him down."

"It is forty paces further than my musket would carry," remarked Du
Lhut, "but I have seen the English shoot a great way with those long
guns."

Amos took a steady aim, resting his gun upon the window sill, and fired.
A shout of delight burst from the little knot of survivors. The Flemish
Bastard had fallen. But he was on his feet again in an instant and
shook his hand defiantly at the window.

"Curse it!" cried Amos bitterly, in English. "I have hit him with a
spent ball. As well strike him with a pebble."

"Nay, curse not, Amos, lad, but try him again with another pinch of
powder if your gun will stand it."

The woodsman thrust in a full charge, and chose a well-rounded bullet
from his bag, but when he looked again both the Bastard and his warriors
had disappeared. On the river the single Iroquois canoe which held the
captives was speeding south as swiftly as twenty paddles could drive it,
but save this one dark streak upon the blue stream, not a sign was to be
seen of their enemies. They had vanished as if they had been an evil
dream. There was the bullet-spotted stockade, the litter of dead bodies
inside it, the burned and roofless cottages, but the silent woods lay
gleaming in the morning sunshine as quiet and peaceful as if no
hell-burst of fiends had ever broken out from them.

"By my faith, I believe that they have gone!" cried the seigneur.

"Take care that it is not a ruse," said Du Lhut. "Why should they fly
before six men when they have conquered sixty?"

But the _censitaire_ had looked out of the other window, and in an
instant he was down upon his knees with his hands in the air, and his
powder blackened face turned upwards, pattering out prayers and
thanksgivings. His five comrades rushed across the room and burst into
a shriek of joy. The upper reach of the river was covered with a
flotilla of canoes from which the sun struck quick flashes as it shone
upon the musket-barrels and trappings of the crews. Already they could
see the white coats of the regulars, the brown tunics of the
coureurs-de-bois_, and the gaudy colours of the Hurons and Algonquins.
On they swept, dotting the whole breadth of the river, and growing
larger every instant, while far away on the southern bend, the Iroquois
canoe was a mere moving dot which had shot away to the farther side and
lost itself presently under the shadow of the t