“Certainly. I am too old myself.”
Danton rose, and walked a few steps away and back.
“But she will have none of me, Menard. It is, ‘No, with thanks,’ or, worse, a shake of the head. If I offer to help, if I try to talk, if I––oh, it is always the same. I am tired of it.”
Menard smiled in the dark.
“Is that your reply to an order from your superior officer, Danton?”
The boy stood silent for a moment, then he 54 said, “I beg your pardon, Captain.” And with a curious effort at stiffness he wandered off among the trees, and was soon out of Menard’s sight.
Menard walked slowly down to the fire, opened his pack, and spreading out his blanket, rolled himself in it with his feet close to the red embers. For a long time he lay awake. This episode took him back nearly a decade, to a time when he, like Danton, would have lost his poise at a glance from the nearest pair of eyes. That the maid should so interest him was in itself amusing. Had she been older or younger, had she been any but the timid, honest little woman that she was, he would have left her, without a second thought, in the care of the Commandant at Montreal, to be escorted through the rapids by some later party. But he had fixed his mind on getting her to Frontenac, and the question was settled. His last thought that night was of her quiet laughter and her friendly, hesitating “good-night.”
He was awakened in the half light before the sunrise by a step on the twigs. At a little distance through the trees was the maid, walking down toward the water. She slipped easily between the briers, holding her skirt close. 55 From a spring, not a hundred yards up the hillside, a brook came tumbling to the river, picking its way under and over the stones and the fallen trees, and trickling over the bank with a low murmur. The maid stopped by a pool, and kneeling on a flat rock, dipped her hands.
The others were asleep. A rod away lay Danton, a sprawling heap in his blanket. Menard rose, tossed his blanket upon his bundle, and walked slowly down toward the maid.
“Mademoiselle, you rise with the birds.”