In a ragged, uneven line they strung out, fading into the darkness, and presently from down the river some forty rods there rose up the columns of their fires.
Fort de Seviere closed its gates and settled into the night with a feeling of something gone awry.
By morning all was early astir, those within to witness the departure of the strangers, and, those without for that same departure.
The canoes were floated, the men embarked, and all in readiness with the first flame of the sun above the eastern forest when Alfred de Courtenay presented himself at the gate and called for McElroy.
Gladly the factor responded, hoping somewhat to soften the awkwardness of the situation by a godspeed, to be met by the Frenchman high-headed and most carefully polite. A servant beside him held a wickered jug.
“With your leave, M'sieu,” said De Courtenay, “I wish to leave some earnest of my gratefulness for what we have received at your hands. Therefore accept with my compliments this small gift, which, as you say you have no cantine salope, must come most happily. Once more, farewell.”
The man set down the jug at McElroy's feet and strode toward the landing. The master was turning more leisurely away with his uncovered curls shining in the first level beams of morning, when he stopped and looked past the portal within the stockade.
With a small brass kettle in her hand, Maren Le Moyne was coming down the open way toward the well.
With a colossal coolness he forgot the presence of the factor and the ready light began to sparkle in his blue eyes with every step of the approaching girl. Swiftly he glanced to right and left, as if in search of something, and meeting only the green slope of the shore, a growing excitement flushed his face.
Suddenly he snatched from a crevice of the stockade a tiny crimson flower which nodded, frail and fragrant, from its precarious foothold, and sprang forward as she set her vessel on the well's stone wall.