's interest in Charteris was heightened by the delicate cloud of
romance that floated about him, a cloud that rose from the hints thrown
forth now and then by Zebedee Crane. The young French lady in Quebec who
loved him was as beautiful as the dawn and she had the spirit of a
queen. Charteris lived in the hope that they might take Quebec and her
with it. But Robert was far too fine of feeling ever to allude to such
an affair of the heart to Charteris, or in truth to any one else.

It was a period of waiting and yet it was a period of activity. The
partisans were incessant in their ways. Robert heard that his old
friend, Langlade, was leading a numerous band against the English, and
the evidences of Tandakora's murderous ferocity multiplied. Nor were the
outlying French themselves safe from him. News arrived that he intended
an attack upon a chateau called Chatillard farther up the river but
within the English lines. A band of the New England rangers, led by
Willet, was sent to drive him off, and to destroy the Ojibway pest, if
possible. Robert, Tayoga and Zeb Crane went with him.

They arrived at the chateau just before twilight. It was a solid stone
building overlooking the St. Lawrence, and the lands about it had a
narrow frontage on the river, but it ran back miles after the old French
custom in making such grants, in order that every estate might have a
river landing. Willet's troops numbered about forty men, and, respecting
the aged M. de Chatillard, who was quite ill and in bed, they did not
for the present go into the house, eating their own supper on the long,
narrow lawn, which was thick with dwarfed and clipped pines and other
shrubbery.

But they lighted no fires, and they kept very quiet, since they wished
for Tandakora to walk into an ambush. The information, most of which had
been obtained by Zeb Crane, was to the effect that Tandakora believed a
guard of English soldiers was in the house. After his custom he would
swoop down upon them, slaughter them, and then be up and away. It was a
trick in which the savage heart of the Ojibway delighted, and he had
achieved it more than once.

The August night came down thick and dark. A few lights shone in the
Chateau de Chatillard, but Willet and his rangers stood in black gloom.
Almost at their feet the great St. Lawrence flowed in its mighty
channel, a dim blue under the dusky sky. Nothing was visible there save
the slow stream, majestic, an incalculable weight