"Le Gardeur and Pierre Philibert will be under your orders,
my Lady, and my orders are that they are not to return to the city until
all dangers of the Iroquois are over."

"All right, your Excellency!" exclaimed Le Gardeur. "I shall obey my
aunt." He was acute enough to see through their kindly scheming for
his welfare; but his good nature and thorough devotion to his aunt and
sister, and his affectionate friendship for Pierre, made him yield to
the project without a qualm of regret. Le Gardeur was assailable on many
sides,--a fault in his character--or a weakness--which, at any rate,
sometimes offered a lever to move him in directions opposite to the
malign influences of Bigot and his associates.

The company rose from the tea-table and moved to the drawing-room, where
conversation, music, and a few games of cards whiled away a couple of
hours very pleasantly.

Amelie sang exquisitely. The Governor was an excellent musician, and
accompanied her. His voice, a powerful tenor, had been strengthened
by many a conflict with old Boreas on the high seas, and made soft and
flexible by his manifold sympathies with all that is kindly and good and
true in human nature.

A song of wonderful pathos and beauty had just been brought down from
the wilds of the Ottawa, and become universally sung in New France. A
voyageur flying from a band of Iroquois had found a hiding-place on a
rocky islet in the middle of the Sept Chutes. He concealed himself from
his foes, but could not escape, and in the end died of starvation and
sleeplessness. The dying man peeled off the white bark of the birch, and
with the juice of berries wrote upon it his death song, which was found
long after by the side of his remains. His grave is now a marked spot
on the Ottawa. La Complainte de Cadieux had seized the imagination of
Amelie. She sang it exquisitely, and to-night needed no pressing to
do so, for her heart was full of the new song, composed under such
circumstances of woe. Intense was the sympathy of the company, as she
began:

"'Petit rocher de la haute montagne,
Je viens finir ici cette campagne!
Ah! doux echos, entendez mes soupirs!
En languissant je vais bientot--mourir.'"

There were no dry eyes as she concluded. The last sighs of Cadieux
seemed to expire on her lips:

"'Rossignole, va dire a ma maitresse,
A mes enfans, qu'un adieu je leur laisse,
Que j'ai garde mon amour et ma foi,