At nightfall they crept beneath a pile of brush and leaves, concealing the deserted lair of a gray fox, and Gabriel, worn out now, and happy in the thought of at sunrise being free to abandon the circuitous route and making straight for the fort, but a few miles distant, soon fell asleep.
But there is many a slip, etc. It seemed to him that he had slept but five minutes when he was aroused by a flash of light in his eyes, and he opened them to find himself in the grasp of half a dozen Micmacs, behind them Le Loutre. Jean Jacques was nowhere to be seen. Speechless, he looked from one dark face to another; every one of them he knew to be unfriendly, or at least corrupted by French gold. His young heart felt nigh to bursting. So near the goal and to be thwarted thus! So near the new life, in which, in his youthful enthusiasm, he believed he could be true to the highest that was in him, true to his grandfather and Margot, vaguely but ardently hopeful that he could save them. And Jean Jacques? Had he indeed betrayed him?
It was one of those moments of discouragement in which even the falsity of an untutored savage can pierce the very soul.
“Bind him, and bring him on!” was the priest’s stern command.
Bewildered by fatigue, sick with disappointment, Gabriel offered no resistance, uttered no word. He was dragged about a mile and then dropped rudely by the embers of a camp-fire. Waving his “lambs” to a distance, Le Loutre addressed him in accents cold as steel and merciless as the hand that drives it home.
“Have I not told thee that thou canst not escape me, I, the chosen instrument of God to bring stragglers back into the fold? My duty is clear. He who will not bend must break.”
He paused, but his hearer made no sign.
“Thou knowest what is demanded of thee. This day my converts go on a friendly mission to the new fort. Must I instruct thee yet again in thy duty?”
He waited for the response that came not. Gabriel lay as if life itself were already crushed out of him; every drooping finger of his strong, right hand nerveless, hopeless. Yet must there have been something of tacit resistance in his air, for Le Loutre continued in tones of exasperation:
“Opposition will avail thee nothing, and for thy grandfather and cousin it will mean suffering and privation beyond their wildest dreams. Every Acadian is rewarded according to his loyalty to the king and to the true church. Hitherto I have spared them, but it is I alone who have the ordering of their going, and of the new home to which they journey. The gran’-père is old, Margot more tender than is the habit of Acadian maidens, yet must the church not stay her hand when the saving of souls is in the balance. She must make example, she must discipline. I am no man meting out man’s justice,” continued the fanatic, raising his hands solemnly, “but chosen of the church to execute her righteous will. This being so, thou wilt find me relentless in my duty.”