The boy lifted his brimming eyes, and answered her from his deeper hurt:—­

“I don’t know what to do.  I think my father would make for General Montcalm’s camp if he were alone and could not attack the enemy’s rear; for something ought to be done as quickly as possible.”

Jeannette bandaged his head, the rain spattering through the broken log house upon them both.

“Who brought you here?” inquired Jacques.  “There was nobody in these houses last night, for I searched them myself.”

“I hid here before daybreak,” she answered briefly.

“But if you knew the English were coming, why did you not give the alarm?”

“I was their prisoner.”

“And where will you go now?”

She looked towards the Plains of Abraham and said nothing.  The open chink showed Wolfe’s six battalions of scarlet lines moving forward or pausing, and the ridge above them thronging with white uniforms.

“If you will trust yourself to me, mamoiselle,” proposed Jacques, who considered that it was not the part of a soldier or a gentleman to leave any woman alone in this hut to take the chances of battle, and particularly a woman who had bound up his head, “I will do my best to help you inside the French lines.”

The singular woman did not reply to him, but continued looking through the chink.  Skirmishers were out.  Puffs of smoke from cornfields and knolls showed where Canadians and Indians hid, creeping to the flank of the enemy.

Jacques stooped down himself, and struck his hands together at these sights.

“Monsieur de Montcalm is awake, mademoiselle!  And see our sharpshooters picking them off!  We can easily run inside the French lines now.  These English will soon be tumbled back the way they came up.”

In another hour the group of houses was a roaring furnace.  A detachment of English light infantry, wheeled to drive out the bushfighters, had lost and retaken it many times, and neither party gave up the ready fortress until it was set on fire.  Crumbling red logs hissed in the thin rain, and smoke spread from them across the sodden ground where Wolfe moved.  The sick man had become an invincible spirit.  He flew along the ranks, waving his sword, the sleeve falling away from his thin arm.  The great soldier had thrown himself on this venture without a chance of retreat, but every risk had been thought of and met.  He had a battalion guarding the landing.  He had a force far in the rear to watch the motions of the French at Cap Rouge.  By the arrangement of his front he had taken precautions against being outflanked.  And he knew his army was with him to a man.  But Montcalm rode up to meet him hampered by insubordinate confusion.