The sentinel and Robert rushed into the shrubbery but nothing was there.  As they looked about in the dusk, Robert heard a refrain, distant, faint and taunting: 

  “Hier sur le pont d’Avignon
   J’ai oui chanter la belle
        Lon, la.”

It was only for an instant, then it died like a summer echo, and he knew that St. Luc was gone.  An immense weight rolled from him.  He had done what he should have done, but the result that he feared had not followed.

“I can find nothing, sir,” said the sentinel, who recognized in Robert one of superior rank.

“Nor I, but you saw the figure, did you not?”

“I did, sir.  ’Twas more like a shadow, but ’twas a man, I’ll swear.”

Robert was glad to have the sentinel’s testimony, because in another moment the revelers were upon him, making sport of him for his false alarm, and asserting that not his eyes but the punch he had drunk had seen a French spy.

“I scarce tasted the punch,” said Robert, “and the soldier here is witness that I spoke true.”

A farther and longer search was organized, but the Frenchman had vanished into the thinnest of thin air.  As Robert walked with Willet and Tayoga back to the tavern, the hunter said: 

“I suppose it was St. Luc?”

“Yes, but why did you think it was he?”

“Because it was just the sort of deed he would do.  Did you speak with him?”

“Yes, and I told him I must give the alarm.  He disappeared with amazing speed and silence.”

Robert made a brief report the next day to Governor Dinwiddie, not telling that St. Luc and he had spoken together, stating merely that he had seen him, giving his name, and describing him as one of the most formidable of the French forest leaders.

“I thank you, Mr. Lennox,” said the Governor.  “Your information shall be conveyed to General Braddock.  Yet I think our force will be too great for the wilderness bands.”

On the following day they were at Alexandria on the Potomac, where the great council was to be held.  Here Braddock’s camp was spread, and in a large tent he met Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, Governor de Lancey of New York, Governor Sharpe of Maryland, Governor Dobbs of North Carolina and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, an elderly lawyer, but the ablest and most energetic of all the governors.

It was the most momentous council yet held in North America, and all the young officers waited with the most intense eagerness the news from the tent.  Robert saw Braddock as he went in, a middle-aged man of high color and an obstinate chin.  Grosvenor gave him some of the gossip about the general.

“London has many stories of him,” he said.  “He has spent most of his life in the army.  He is a gambler, but brave, rough but generous, irritable, but often very kind.  Opposition inflames him, but he likes zeal and good service.  He is very fond of your young Mr. Washington, who, I hear is much of a man.”