The cannon was for the time silent, the gunners being elsewhere, but a boy’s voice called from the bastion:—­

“Come out here, mademoiselle.  I have an apple for you.”

“Where did you get an apple?” replied a girl’s voice.

“Monsieur Bigot gave it to me.  He has everything the king’s stores will buy.  His slave was carrying a basketful.”

“I do not like Monsieur Bigot.  His face is blotched, and he kisses little girls.”

“His apples are better than his manners,” observed the boy, waiting, knife in hand, for her to come and see that the division was a fair one.

She tiptoed out from the gallery of the commandant’s house, the wind blowing her curls back from her shoulders.  A bastion of Fort St. Louis was like a balcony in the clouds.  The child’s lithe, long body made a graceful line in every posture, and her face was vivid with light and expression.

“Perhaps your sick mother would like this apple, Monsieur Jacques.  We do not have any in the fort.”

The boy flushed.  He held the halves ready on his palm.

“I thought of her; but the surgeon might forbid it, and she is not fond of apples when she is well.  And you are always fond of apples, Mademoiselle Anglaise.”

“My name is Clara Baker.  If you call me Mademoiselle Anglaise, I will box your ears.”

“But you are English,” persisted the boy.  “You cannot help it.  I am sorry for it myself; and when I am grown I will whip anybody that reproaches you for it.”

They began to eat the halves of the apple, forgetful of Jacques’s sick mother, and to quarrel as their two nations have done since France and England stood on the waters.

“Don’t distress yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny.  The English will be the fashion in Quebec when you are grown.”

It was amusing to hear her talk his language glibly while she prophesied.

“Do you think your ugly General Wolfe can ever make himself the fashion?” retorted Jacques.  “I saw him once across the Montmorenci when I was in my father’s camp.  His face runs to a point in the middle, and his legs are like stilts.”

“His stilts will lift him into Quebec yet.”

The boy shook his black queue.  He had a cheek in which the flush came and went, and black sparkling eyes.

“The English never can take this province.  What can you know about it?  You were only a little baby when Madame Ramesay bought you from the Iroquois Indians who had stolen you.  If your name had not been on your arm, you would not even know that.  But a Le Moyne of Montreal knows all about the province.  My grandfather, Le Moyne de Longueuil, was wounded down there at Beauport, when the English came to take Canada before.  And his brother Jacques that I am named for—­Le Moyne de Sainte-Helene—­was killed.  I have often seen the place where he died when I went with my father to our camp.”

The little girl pushed back her sleeve, as she did many times a day, and looked at the name tattooed in pale blue upon her arm.  Jacques envied her that mark, and she was proud of it.  Her traditions were all French, but the indelible stamp, perhaps of an English seaman, reminded her what blood was in her veins.