“Teganouan has ears.”
“Very well. I am going to blow out the candle.”
The room was dark. The door creaked softly, and a breath of air blew in upon the Captain as he stood by the table. He felt 403 over the table for his tinder-box and struck a light. The door was slowly closing; Teganouan had gone.
Another sun was setting. A single drum was beating loudly as the little garrison drew up outside the sally-port and presented arms. The allies and the mission Indians were crowding down upon the beach, silent, inquisitive,––puffing at their short pipes. For half a league, from the flat, white beach out over the rose-tinted water stretched an irregular black line of canoes and bateaux, all bristling with muskets. The Governor had come. He could be seen kneeling, all sunburned and ragged but with erect head, in the first canoe. His canoemen checked their swing, for the beach was close at hand, and then backed water. The bow scraped, and a dozen hands were outstretched in aid, but Governor Denonville stepped briskly out into the ankle-deep water and carried his own pack ashore. A cheer went up from the little line at the sally-port. Du Luth’s voyageurs and coureur de bois caught it up, and then it swept far out over the water and was echoed back from the forest.
In the doorway of a hut near the Recollet 404 Chapel stood Menard and Valérie. They watched canoe after canoe glide up and empty its load of soldiers, not speaking as they watched, but thinking each the same thought. At last, when the straggling line was pouring into the fort, and the bugles were screaming, and the drum rolling, Valérie slipped her hand through the Captain’s arm and looked up into his face.
“It was you who brought them here,” she said; and then, after a pause, she laughed a breathless little laugh. “It was you,” she repeated.