“I knew not that you were afraid of mice and lightning, my Claire.”
“Am I to be the wife of Dollard and have sixteen young men thrust between him and myself, all accounted worthy of martyrdom above me?”
“Daughter of a Montmorency!” burst out Dollard with passion; “better than any man on earth! I do you homage—I prostrate myself—I adore you! Yet must I profane your ears with this: no woman can go with the expedition without bringing discredit on it.”
“Not even your wife?”
“Not even my wife. After absolution in the chapel this morning we are set apart, consecrated to the purpose before us.”
Claire dropped her face and said:
“I comprehend.” He held her upon his breast the brief remainder of their journey, prostrated as she had not been by the shock of his confession.
Mount Royal stood dome-like on Montreal island, a huge shadow glooming out of the north-west upon the little village. After shifting about from a river point of view, those structures composing the town finally settled in their order: the fort, the rough stone seminary of St. Sulpice, the Hôtel-Dieu, the wooden houses standing in a single long row, and eastward the great fortified mill surrounded by a wall. The village itself had neither wall nor palisade.
Surrounding dark fields absorbed light and gave back no glint of dew or sprinkling green blade, for the seed-sowing was not yet finished. Black bears squatting or standing about the fields at length revealed themselves as charred stumps and half trees.