From her hiding-place in one of the empty houses behind Vergor’s tents, Jeannette Descheneaux watched the scarlet backs and the tartans of the Highlanders grow smaller.  She could also see the prisoners that were taken standing under guard.  As for herself, she felt that she had no longer a visible presence, so easy had it been for her to move among swarms of men and escape in darkness.  She never had favored her body with soft usage, but it trembled now in every part from muscular strain.  She was probably cold and hungry, but her poignant sensation was that she had no friends.  It did not matter to Jeannette that history was being made before her, and one of the great battles of the world was about to be fought.  It only mattered that she should discern the Fraser plaid as far as eye could follow it.  There is no more piteous thing than for one human being to be overpowered by the god in another.

She sat on the ground in the unfloored hut, watching through broken chinking.  There was a back door as well as a front door, hung on wooden hinges, and she had pinned the front door as she came in.  The opening of the back door made Jeannette turn her head, though with little interest in the comer.  It was a boy, with a streak of blood down his face and neck, and his clothes stained by the weather.  He had no hat on, and one of his shoes was missing.  He put himself at Jeannette’s side without any hesitation, and joined her watch through the broken chinking.  A tear and a drop of scarlet raced down his cheek, uniting as they dripped from his chin.

“Have you been wounded?” inquired Jeannette.

“It isn’t the wound,” he answered, “but that Captain Vergor has let them take the heights.  I heard something myself, and tried to wake him.  The pig turned over and went to sleep again.”

“Let me tie it up,” said Jeannette.

“He is shot in the heel and taken prisoner.  I wish he had been shot in the heart.  He hopped out of bed and ran away when the English fired on his tent.  I have been trying to get past their lines to run to General Montcalm; but they are everywhere,” declared the boy, his chin shaking and his breast swelling with grief.

Jeannette turned her back on him, and found some linen about her person which she could tear.  She made a bandage for his head.  It comforted her to take hold of the little fellow and part his clotted hair.

“The skin of my head is torn,” he admitted, while suffering the attempted surgery.  “If I had been taller, the bullet might have killed me; and I would rather be killed than see the English on this rock, marching to take Quebec.  What will my father say?  I am ashamed to look him in the face and own I slept in the camp of Vergor last night.  The Le Moynes and Repentignys never let enemies get past them before.  And I knew that man was not keeping watch; he did not set any sentry.”

“Is it painful?” she inquired, wiping the bloody cut, which still welled forth along its channel.