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      “Sitting on a bundle was, a girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old.”

      37

      Menard’s eyes sobered, and he handed his musket to one of the canoemen. Then he crossed over to where the maiden was sitting.

      “Mademoiselle St. Denis?”

      The girl looked up at him. Her eyes seemed to take in the dinginess of his uniform. She inclined her head.

      “I am Captain Menard. Major Provost tells me that I am to have the honour of escorting you to Fort Frontenac. With your permission we will start. Father Claude de Casson is to go with us, and Lieutenant Danton.”

      The bundle was placed in the canoe. Menard helped the girl to a seat near the middle: from the way she stepped in and took her seat he saw that she had been on the river before. Danton, with his Parisian airs, had to be helped in carefully. Then they were off, each of the four men swinging a paddle, though Danton managed his awkwardly at first.

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CHAPTER III.

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MADEMOISELLE EATS HER BREAKFAST.

       Table of Contents

      The sun hung low over the western woods when Menard, at the close of the second day, headed the canoe shoreward. The great river swept by with hardly a surface motion, dimpling and rippling under the last touch of the day breeze. Menard’s eyes rested on Father Claude, as the canoe drew into the shadow of the trees. The priest, stiff from the hours of sitting and kneeling, had taken up a paddle and was handling it deftly. He had rolled his sleeves up to the elbow, showing a thin forearm with wire-like muscles. The two voyageurs, at bow and stern, were proving to be quiet enough fellows. Guerin, the younger, wore a boyish, half-confiding look. His fellow, Perrot, was an older man.

      Menard felt, when he thought of Danton, a sense of pride in his own right judgment. The boy was taking hold with a strong, if unguided, 39 hand. Already the feather was gone from his hat, the lace from his throat. Two days in the canoe and a night on the ground had stained and wrinkled his uniform,––a condition of which, with his quick adaptability, he was already beginning to feel proud. He had flushed often, during the first day, under the shrewd glances of the voyageurs, who read the inexperience in his bright clothes and white hands. Menard knew, from the way his shoulders followed the swing of his arms, that the steady paddling was laming him sadly. He would

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