Tonty thought about the matter while light grew in the sky, but dismissed it when the priest of Fort St. Louis summoned his great family to matins. On such pleasant mornings they were chanted in the open air.
The sun rose, drawing filaments from the mass of vapor like a spinner, and every shred disappeared while the eye watched it. Preparations went forward for breakfast, while children’s and birds’ voices already chirped above and below the steep ascent.
One urchin brought Tonty a paper, saying it was Monsieur Joutel’s, the young man who slept in the storehouse and was that morning gone from the fort.
“Did he tell you to give it to me?” inquired Tonty.
“Monsieur,” complained the lad, “he pinned it in the cap of my large brother and left order it was to be given to you after two days. But my large brother hath this morning pinned it in my cap, and it may work me harm. Besides, I desire to amuse myself by the river, and if I lost Monsieur Joutel’s paper I should get whipped.”
“I commend you,” laughed Tonty, as he took the packet. “You must have no secrets from your commandant.”
The child leaped, relieved, toward the gate, and this heavy communication shook between the iron and the natural hand. Tonty spread it open on his right gauntlet.
He read a few moments with darkening countenance. Then the busy people on the Rock were startled by a cry of awful anguish. Tonty rushed to the centre of the esplanade, flinging the paper from him, and shouted, “Du Lhut—men of Fort St. Louis! Monsieur de la Salle has been murdered in that southern wilderness! We have had one of the assassins hiding here in our storehouse! Get out the boats!”
Men and women paused in their various business, and children, like frightened sheep, gathered closely around their mothers. The clamorous cry which disaster wrings from excitable Latins burst out in every part of the fortress. Du Lhut grasped the paper and read it while he limped after Tonty.