CHAPTER V.
t sunrise on the following morning Isidore and his guide started for Chambly. Happily, Amoahmeh was still asleep. Accustomed as she was to the woods, the great distance they had traversed on the preceding day, and perhaps the excitement she had undergone, had told on her slight frame, and nature had insisted on her claim to a longer rest than usual. What the poor child's feelings may have been when she awoke and found herself once more alone in the world who shall say? Possibly the unwonted exercise of some still active faculties the day before had dulled her sensibility, for outwardly, at least, she seemed to have forgotten all the past, and went about as though she had never known any other home, and as though the strange faces that she saw around her had looked upon her all her life. But the earnest yet plaintively uttered, "Where are they?" no longer fell from her lips. It had been answered, and amid the darkness that enveloped that young loving soul, it may well be that there was one glimmering ray of light that kept some smouldering embers of reason still alive.
Isidore's mission was completed without further adventure, and after delivering his despatches at Chambly, and reporting to the commandant the particulars he had noted on his way thither, in conformity with General Montcalm's directions, he was ordered to proceed to Quebec on another service. This journey, although of about the same length as the previous one, was a much more easy affair, and was performed by water. Boulanger, however, who was now on his way home, still acted as guide, and day by day won more and more upon Isidore by his readiness and intelligence, and probably—though the young marquis might have been unwilling to own it—by his honest frankness and his outspoken dislike of everything mean and underhand. Even his remarks on passing events were listened to with a forbearance which they would hardly have met with from the Isidore de Beaujardin of a week ago.
In a few days Isidore and his guide reached Quebec, and there, notwithstanding the little occasional skirmishes that had taken place between them, they parted with regret, and with cordial expressions of good-will. The young soldier had had opportunity enough to see and appreciate the honest character of the Canadian, whilst the latter had been still more struck with the condescension as well as by the courage and endurance of the young noble, of whose high rank he was well aware, and whose almost necessarily courteous manner, even to his inferiors, formed a strong contrast to the overbearing and arbitrary behaviour of the Government officials with whom he generally had to deal.
Isidore's first proceeding was to report himself and deliver his despatches, on doing which he learned that although the intelligence of the capture of Oswego had arrived, no details had as yet been received, nor had his uncle, the Baron de Valricour, as yet reached Quebec. It was consequently not without hesitation that he made his way to the house of Madame de Rocheval, the lady with whom the daughter of Captain Lacroix was staying.
Isidore had never seen Marguerite Lacroix, but he took it for granted that it was she who, on his being shown into the drawing-room, rose from her embroidery frame to receive him.