Earth from the breastworks, distributed by thuds of occasional Iroquois bullets, spattered impartially both Claire and Dollard. They had no privacy. Guttural Huron and Algonquin murmurs and the nervous intonation of French voices would have broken into all ordinary conversation. But looking deeply at each other, and unconsciously breathing in the same cadences, they had their moment of talk as if standing on a peak together. There was a lonesome bird in the woods uttering three or four falling notes, which could be heard at intervals when not drowned by any rising din of the Iroquois.
“They sent a canoe down river this afternoon,” said Dollard, “evidently for their reinforcements from below.”
“How long do you think we can hold out?” inquired Claire.
“Until we have broken their force. We must do that.”
“I was on an island at the mouth of the Ottawa when you passed, my commandant. That was purgatory to me.”
“Since you reached us,” said Dollard, “I have accepted you without question and without remorse. I am stupefied. I love you. But, Claire, to what a death I have brought you!”
“It is a death befitting well the daughter of the stout-hearted Constable of France. But do not leave me again, Dollard!”
“The Iroquois shall not touch you alive, Claire,” he promised.
“I am ready shriven,” she said, smiling. “Except of one fault. That will I now confess,—a fault committed against the delicacy of women,—and I hated the abbess and the bishop because they detected me in it. I came to New France for love of you, my soldier. Could I help following you from world to world?”