Saint-Castin stood on his bachelor hearth, leaning an arm on the mantel.  The light shone on his buckskin fringes, his dejected shoulders, and his clean-shaven youthful face.  A supper stood on the table near him, where his Etchemin servants had placed it before they trotted off to the camps.  The high windows flickered, and there was not a sound in the house except the low murmur or crackle of the glowing backlog, until the door-latch clanked, and the door flew wide and was slammed shut again.  Saint-Castin looked up with a frown, which changed to stupid astonishment.

Madockawando’s daughter seized him by the wrist.

“Is there any way out of the fort except through the gate?”

“None,” answered Saint-Castin.

“Is there no way of getting over the wall?”

“The ladder can be used.”

“Run, then, to the ladder!  Be quick.”

“What is the matter?” demanded Saint-Castin.

The Abenaqui girl dragged on him with all her strength as he reached for the iron door-latch.

“Not that way—­they will see you—­they are coming from the river!  Go through some other door.”

“Who are coming?”

Yielding himself to her will, Saint-Castin hurried with her from room to room, and out through his kitchen, where the untidy implements of his Etchemin slaves lay scattered about.  They ran past the storehouse, and he picked up a ladder and set it against the wall.

“I will run back and ring the chapel bell,” panted the girl.

“Mount!” said Saint-Castin sternly; and she climbed the ladder, convinced that he would not leave her behind.

He sat on the wall and dragged the ladder up, and let it down on the outside.  As they both reached the ground, he understood what enemy had nearly trapped him in his own fortress.

“The doors were all standing wide,” said a cautious nasal voice, speaking English, at the other side of the wall.  “Our fox hath barely sprung from cover.  He must be near.”

“Is not that the top of a ladder?” inquired another voice.

At this there was a rush for the gate.  Madockawando’s daughter ran like the wind, with Saint-Castin’s hand locked in hers.  She knew, by night or day, every turn of the slender trail leading to the deserted chapel.  It came to her mind as the best place of refuge.  They were cut off from the camps, because they must cross their pursuers on the way.

The lord of Pentegoet could hear bushes crackling behind him.  The position of the ladder had pointed the direction of the chase.  He laughed in his headlong flight.  This was not ignominious running from foes, but a royal exhilaration.  He could run all night, holding the hand that guided him.  Unheeded branches struck him across the face.  He shook his hair back and flew light-footed, the sweep of the magnificent body beside him keeping step.  He could hear the tide boom against the headland,