"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou art the only man on earth I would choke with a rope."
"Will no one be reprieved?"
D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.
"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics, Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of this fort."
The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donné. These never came from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind for the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the entire company.
Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his guest into the fortress.
The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had shown favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donné and two companions.
The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with heavenly authority.
"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and Monsieur Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed, guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint—you can move D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."
A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy. Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?—the permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God hold in His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.