"God forbid," said I; "the savages are likely behind, driving the animals in."
Nevertheless I did open the gates and let the cattle in, my brothers standing on each side, ready to shoot if an Indian appeared.
At last came daylight; and we were hopeful for aid from Montreal; but Marguerite Fontaine, being timorous as all Parisian women are, begged her husband to try and escape. The poor husband was almost distracted as she insisted, and he told her he would set her out in the canoe with her two sons, who could paddle it, but he would not abandon Mademoiselle in Verchères. I had been twenty-four hours without rest or food, and had not once gone from the bastion. On the eighth day of the siege Lieutenant de La Monnerie reached the fort during the night with forty men.
One of our sentries had called out, "Who goes?"
I was dozing with my head on a table and a musket across my arm. The sentry said there were voices on the water. I called, "Who are you?"
They answered, "French—come to your aid!"
I went down to the bank, saying: "Sir, but you are welcome! I surrender my arms to you!"
"Mademoiselle," he answered, "they are in good hands."
I forgot one incident. On the day of the attack I remembered about one in the afternoon that our linen was outside the fort, but the soldiers refused to go out for it. Armed with our guns, my brothers made two trips outside the walls for our linen. The Iroquois must have thought it a trick to lure them closer, for they did not approach.
It need scarcely be added that brave mothers make brave sons, and it is not surprising that twenty-five years later, when Madeline Verchères had become the wife of M. de La Naudière, her own life was saved from Abenaki Indians by her little son, age twelve.