“But,” continued Jouaneaux, “this I will say: ill did she requite us in that she carried off the novice Massawippa, whose father, the Huron chief, had put her in the Hôtel-Dieu to take vows.”
“I will go to the governor,” threatened Jacques, feeling himself baited.
“And what will it profit thee to go to the governor? The governor is a just man, and he hath the good of the Hôtel-Dieu at heart.”
“I know nothing about your Hôtel-Dieu,” said Jacques, having forebodings at his heart.
“But where is our novice?” persisted Jouaneaux, following him.
“I know nothing about your novice.”
At the governor’s house, by scant questions on his part and much speech on Jouaneaux’s, he learned that Dollard was yet unheard from, that Claire had been left at the hospital, and for some unspoken reason, which Jacques silently accepted as good since it was the commandant’s reason, she had been received as the commandant’s sister; and finally that she had disappeared with a young novice, the daughter of Annahotaha, soon after the expedition left, and no one in Montreal knew anything else about her.
Distressed to muteness by such tidings, Jacques went back to his boat, still followed by Jouaneaux, and pushed off up the river with the malediction of St. Joseph invoked upon him.