"And break your pretty neck," answered the ungallant father with indignation.
There was a rustling of skirts being gathered across the window sill and outlines of a white face gave place to the figure of a frail girl preparing for a leap.
"Don't!" I cried, genuinely alarmed, with a mental vision of shattered statuary on the ground. "Don't! I'm getting the benches," and I piled them up, with a rickety bucket on top. "Wait!" I implored, stepping up on the bottom bench. "Give me your hand," and as I caught her hands, she leaped from the window to the bucket, and the bucket to the ground, with a daintiness, which I thought savored of experience in such escapades.
"What do you mean, young woman?" demanded Father Holland in anger. "I'll have none of your frisky nonsense! Do you know, you baggage, that you are delaying this young man in a matter that is of life-and-death importance? Tell me this instant, what do you want?"
"I want to save that woman, Miriam! You're both so slow and stupid! Come, quick!" and she caught us by the arms. "There's a skiff down among the rushes in the flats. I can guide you to it. Cross the river in it! Oh! Quick! Quick! Some of the Hudson's Bay brigades have already passed!"
"How do you know?" we both demanded as in one breath.
"I'm Frances Sutherland. My father is one of the Selkirk settlers and he had word that they would pass to-night! Oh! Come! Come!"
This girl, the daughter of a man who was playing double to both companies! And her service to me would compel me to be loyal to him! Truly, I was becoming involved in a way that complicated simple duty. But the girl had darted ahead of us, we following by the flutter of the white gown, and she led us out of the courtyard by a sally-port to the rear of a block-house. She paused in the shadow of some shrubbery.
"Get fagots from the Indians to light us across the flats," she whispered to Father Holland. "They'll think nothing of your coming. You're always among them!"
"Mistress Sutherland!" I began, as the priest hurried forward to the Indian camp-fires, "I hate to think of you risking yourself in this way for——"