“Let us go directly,” said Claire.
Directly they went. Sister Macé paused but to close with care the chapel door behind them. The chapel was dark and they groped across it and up the stairway, Sister Macé talking low and breathlessly on the ascent.
“Ah, mademoiselle, what a blessed and safe retreat is the rood-loft! How many times have my Sister Maillet and I flown to that sacred corner and prostrated ourselves before the Holy Sacrament while the yells of the Iroquois rung in our very ears! We expected every instant to be seized, and to feel the scalps torn from our heads. I have not the fortitude to bear these things as hath my Sister Brésoles,—this way, mademoiselle; give me your hand,—but I can appreciate noble courage; and, mademoiselle, I look with awe upon these young men about to take their vows.”
The sacrament and its appendages had been removed from Sister Macé’s retreat to the altar below. There was a low balustrade at the front of this narrow gallery which would conceal people humble enough to flatten themselves beside it, and here the woman bereft and the woman her sympathizer did lie on the floor and look down from the rood-loft. Before many moments an acolyte came in with his taper and lighted all the candles on the altar. Out of dusk the rough little room, with its few sacred daubs and its waxen images, sprung into mellow beauty.
Claire watched all that passed, sometimes dropping her face to the floor, and sometimes trembling from head to foot, but letting no sound betray her. She saw the settlement of Montreal crowd into the inclosure as soon as the chapel door was opened, and a Sulpitian priest stand forth by the altar. She saw the seventeen men file into space reserved for them before the altar and kneel there four abreast, Dollard at their head kneeling alone.
The chapel was very silent, French vivacity, which shapes itself into animated fervor on religious occasions, being repressed by this spectacle.
Claire knew the sub-governor Maisonneuve by his surroundings and attendants before Sister Macé breathed him into her ear.
“And that man who now comes forward,” the nun added as secretly—“that is Charles Le Moyne, as brave a man as any in the province, and rich and worthy, moreover. His seigniory is opposite Montreal on the south-east shore.”
Charles Le Moyne, addressing himself to the kneeling men, spoke out for his colleagues and brethren of the settlement who could not leave their farms until the spring crops were all planted. He urged the seventeen to wait until he and his friends could join the expedition. He would promise they should not be delayed long.