“A madman,” pronounced Le Ber.
Careless laughter resounded from the barracks. Some water creature made so distinct a splash and struggle in Cataraqui River that imagination followed the widening circles spreading from its body until an island broke their huge circumference.
“See that something be sent us from the bakehouse,” said Le Ber to the commandant, before leading his daughter into the quarters. “My men have brought provisions from Montreal.”
“We can give you a good supper, monsieur. Two young deer were brought in to-day. As for Monsieur de la Salle,” the commandant added, turning back from the door of the barracks, “you will perhaps not meet him at all in the officers’ quarters. He ate and threw himself down at once to sleep, and he is in haste to set forward to Quebec.”
The bakehouse was illuminated by its oven fire which shone with a dull crimson through the open door, but failed to find out dusky corners where bales, barrels, and cook’s tools were stored. The oven was built in the wall, of stone and cement. The cook, a skipping little fellow smocked in white and wearing a cap, said to himself as he raked out coals and threw them in the fireplace,—
“What a waste of good material is this, when they glow and breathe with such ardor to roast some worthy martyr!”
“The beginning of a martyr is a saint,” observed a soldier of the garrison, putting his fur-covered head between door and door-post in the little space he opened. “We have a saint just landed at Fort Frontenac.”
He stepped in and shut the door, to lounge with the cook while the order he brought was obeyed.
“Some of the best you have, with a tender cut of venison, for Jacques le Ber and his daughter. And some salt meat for his men in the barracks.”