t doors of the kind in
old buildings. There was the window. It was small and high up from
the floor, and even could he loosen the bars, it were not possible to
squeeze through. Besides, there was the yard to cross and the outer wall
to scale. And that achieved, with the town still full of armed men, he
would have a perilous run. He tried the door: it was stoutly fastened;
the bolts were on the other side; the key-hole was filled. Here was
sufficient exasperation. He had secreted a small knife on his person,
and he now sat down, turned it over in his hand, looked up at the window
and the smooth wall below it, at the mocking door, then smiled at his
own poor condition and gave himself to cheerless meditation.

He was concerned most for his wife. It was not in him to give up till
the inevitable was on him and he could not yet believe that Count
Frontenac would carry out the sentence. At the sudden thought of the
rope--so ignominious, so hateful--he shuddered. But the shame of it was
for his wife, who had dissipated a certain selfish and envious strain
in him. Jessica had drawn from him the Puritanism which had made him
self-conscious, envious, insular.

CHAPTER XXI

AN UNTOWARD MESSENGER

A few days after this, Jessica, at her home in Boston,--in the room
where she had promised her father to be George Gering's wife,--sat
watching the sea. Its slow swinging music came up to her through the
October air. Not far from her sat an old man, his hands clasping a
chair-arm, a book in his lap, his chin sunk on his breast. The
figure, drooping helplessly, had still a distinguished look, an air of
honourable pride. Presently he raised his head, his drowsy eyes lighted
as they rested on her, and he said: "The fleet has not returned, my
dear? Quebec is not yet taken?"

"No, father," she replied, "not yet."

"Phips is a great man--a great man!" he said, chuckling. "Ah, the
treasure!"

Jessica did not reply. Her fingers went up to her eyes; they seemed to
cool the hot lids.

"Ay, ay, it was good," he added, in a quavering voice, "and I gave you
your dowry!"

Now there was a gentle, soft laugh of delight and pride, and he reached
out a hand towards her. She responded with a little laugh which was not
unlike his, but there was something more: that old sweet sprightliness
of her youth, shot through with a haunting modulation,--almost
pensiveness, but her face was self-possessed. She drew near, pressed the
old man's hand, a