Jeannette Descheneaux, carried along, with the boy, by Canadians and Indians from the English rear to the Cote Ste. Genevieve, lay dazed in the withered grass during the greater part of the action which decided her people’s hold on the New World.  The ground resounded like a drum with measured treading.  The blaze and crash of musketry and cannon blinded and deafened her; but when she lifted her head from the shock of the first charge, the most instantaneous and shameful panic that ever seized a French army had already begun.  The skirmishers in the bushes could not understand it.  Smoke parted, and she saw the white-and-gold French general trying to drive his men back.  But they evaded the horses of officers.

Jacques rose, with the Canadians and Indians, to his knees.  He had a musket.  Jeannette rose, also, as the Highlanders came sweeping on in pursuit.  She had scarcely been a woman to the bushfighters.  They were too eager in their aim to glance aside at a rawboned camp follower in a wet shawl.  Neither did the Highlanders distinguish from other Canadian heads the one with a woman’s braids and a faint shadowing of hair at the corners of the mouth.  They came on without suspecting an ambush, and she heard their strange cries—­“Cath-Shairm!” and “Caisteal Duna!”—­when the shock of a volley stopped the streaming tartans.  She saw the play of surprise and fury in those mountaineer faces.  They threw down their muskets, and turned on the ambushed Canadians, short sword in hand.

Never did knight receive the blow of the accolade as that crouching woman took a Highland knife in her breast.  For one breath she grasped the back of it with both hands, and her rapt eyes met the horrified eyes of Colonel Fraser.  He withdrew the weapon, standing defenseless, and a ball struck him, cutting the blood across his arm, and again he was lost in the fury of battle, while Jeannette felt herself dragged down the slope.

She resisted.  She heard a boy’s voice pleading with her, but she got up and tried to go back to the spot from which she had been dragged.  The Canadians and Indians were holding their ground.  She heard their muskets, but they were far behind her, and the great rout caught her and whirled her.  Officers on their horses were borne struggling along in it.  She fell down and was trampled on, but something helped her up.

The flood of men poured along the front of the ramparts and down to the bridge of boats on the St. Charles, or into the city walls through the St. Louis and St. John gates.

To Jeannette the world was far away.  Yet she found it once more close at hand, as she stood with her back against the lofty inner wall.  The mad crowd had passed, and gone shouting down the narrow streets.  But the St. Louis gate was still choked with fugitives when Montcalm appeared, reeling on his horse, supported by a soldier on each side.  His white uniform was stained on the breast, and blood dripped from the saddle.  Jeannette heard the piercing cry of a little girl:  “Oh heavens!  Oh heavens!  The marquis is killed!” And she heard the fainting general gasp, “It is nothing, it is nothing.  Don’t be troubled for me, my children.”