"I do not often climb like a sailor," she said, when Van Corlaer gave her his hand at the top. "There is a flight of steps from mine own chamber to the level of the walls. And here Madame Bronck and I have taken the air on winter days when we felt sure of its not blowing us away. But you need not look sad over our pleasures, monsieur. We have had many a sally out of this fort, and monsieur the priest will tell you there is great freedom on snowshoes."
"Madame Bronck has allowed herself little freedom since I came to Fort St. John," observed Van Corlaer.
They all walked the walls from bastion to bastion, and Marie examined the guns, and spoke with her soldiers. On the way back Father Jogues and Lalande paused to watch the Etchemins trail away, and to commune on what their duty directed them to do. Marie walked on with Van Corlaer toward the towered bastion, talking quickly, and ungloving her right hand to help his imagination with it. A bar of sunlight rested with a long slant through vapor on the fortress. Far blue distances were opened on the bay. The rippling full river had already begun to subside and sink line by line from its island.
Van Corlaer gave no attention to the beautiful world. He listened to Madame La Tour with a broadening humorous face and the invincible port of a man who knows nothing of defeat. The sentinel trod back and forth without disturbing this intent conference, but other feet came rushing up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall.
"Madame—madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and resentment.
VIII.
VAN CORLAER.
"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.
"Madame, it is nothing."