ind as the best place of refuge. They were cut
off from the camps, because they must cross their pursuers on the way.

The lord of Pentegoet could hear bushes crackling behind him. The
position of the ladder had pointed the direction of the chase. He
laughed in his headlong flight. This was not ignominious running from
foes, but a royal exhilaration. He could run all night, holding the
hand that guided him. Unheeded branches struck him across the face.
He shook his hair back and flew light-footed, the sweep of the
magnificent body beside him keeping step. He could hear the tide boom
against the headland, and the swish of its recoiling waters. The girl
had her way with him. It did not occur to the officer of the Carignan
regiment that he should direct the escape, or in any way oppose the
will manifested for the first time in his favor. She felt for the
door of the, dark little chapel, and drew him in and closed it. His
judgment rejected the place, but without a word he groped at her side
across to the chancel rail. She lifted the loose slab of the platform,
and tried to thrust him into the earthen-floored box.

"Hide yourself first," whispered Saint-Castin.

They could hear feet running on the flinty approach. The chase was so
close that the English might have seen them enter the chapel.

"Get in, get in!" begged the Abenaqui girl. "They will not hurt me."

"Hide!" said Saint-Castin, thrusting her fiercely in. "Would they not
carry off the core of Saint-Castin's heart if they could?"

She flattened herself on the ground under the platform, and gave him
all the space at her side that the contraction of her body left clear,
and he let the slab down carefully over their heads. They existed
almost without breath for many minutes.

The wooden door-hinges creaked, and stumbling shins blundered against
the benches.

"What is this place?" spoke an English voice. "Let some one take his
tinder-box and strike a light."

"Have care," warned another. "We are only half a score in number. Our
errand was to kidnap Saint-Castin from his hold, not to get ourselves
ambushed by the Abenaquis."

"We are too far from the sloop now," said a third. "We shall be cut
off before we get back, if we have not a care."

"But he must be in here."

"There are naught but benches and walls to hide him. This must be
an idolatrous chapel where the filthy savages congregate to worship
images."

"Come out of the abomination, and let us make ha