“Will you tell us about it, M’sieu?” asked 322 the maid. She was leaning against the bark wall, looking at the two men.
Menard dropped to the ground, and in a quiet voice gave them the story of his capture. The priest rested near him on the broken-down bench that slanted against one wall. As the story grew, the maid came over and sat at the Captain’s feet where she could watch his face as he talked. When he reached the account of the fight at the grave, he paused and looked at her upturned face. Then he went on, but he did not take up the tale where he had dropped it. He could not tell her of Tegakwita’s end. As he went on to the fight with the Long Arrow’s band and the flight through the hill country, he thought that she had missed nothing; but when he had finished she said:––
“And Tegakwita, M’sieu? Did he come with them?”
“No,” Menard replied; “he did not come. I killed him.”
He had not meant to let the words come out so brutally. And now, as he saw the frightened look, almost of horror, come into her eyes, he suffered in a way that would not have been possible before he had known this maid. He read her thoughts,––that she herself was the cause 323 of a double tragedy,––and it for the moment unmanned him. When he could look at her again, she was more nearly herself.
“Go on, M’sieu. There is more?”
“No. There is no more, except that I am here with you. But of yourselves? You have told me nothing.”
“We have told you all there is to tell,” said Father Claude. “We were taken while we slept. They have come rapidly, but otherwise they have not been unkind.”
“You have had food?”
“Yes.”