With these words the old soldier thrust his pike into Rene’s hands, and hurried away as quickly as his pain would permit towards his own quarters in the smithy.

As soon as Simon was out of hearing, Rene went and recovered his cross-bow.  Then he carefully and noiselessly undid the fastenings of the great gate, and swung it open a few inches.  This accomplished, he shouldered Simon’s heavy pike, and patiently paced, like a sentry, up and down beneath the dark archway, until he heard approaching footsteps.

He called softly, “Is that thou, Simon?”

“Ay, lad,” came the answer.

Then laying down the pike, and seizing his own cross-bow, Rene slipped quickly through the gate (which swung to behind him), and with noiseless footsteps fled swiftly across the bridge that spanned the moat, and disappeared in the black shadows of the forest beyond.

[Illustration:  Rene slipped quickly through the gate.]

Although the moon had risen, and was now well up in the eastern sky, so that the bridge was brightly illumined by it, Rene crossed unnoticed.  As the gate was still firmly fastened when he returned, Simon failed to detect that it had been opened, but the old man spent some minutes looking for the lad in the archway before he became convinced that he was gone.  Even then he considered that Rene was only endeavoring to tease him by thus slipping away, and muttering something about a boy being as full of mischief as a monkey, the soldier shouldered his pike and once more resumed his measured pacings up and down the archway.

At the edge of the forest Rene stopped, drew from his bosom a note that he had written before leaving his room, and thrust it into the end of a cleft branch that he stuck into the ground near the end of the bridge.  It was addressed to his Excellency the Chevalier Laudonniere, Commandant of Fort Caroline, and its contents were as follows: 

“My dearly beloved uncle,—­Doubtless I am doing very wrong in thus leaving the fort and undertaking an important mission without thy sanction.  It would seem, however, that circumstances are peculiarly favorable to my success in this matter, and I feared lest thou wouldst forbid the undertaking, out of a tender regard for my youth and inexperience.  I go with the Indian lad Has-se, my friend, to the land of the Alachuas, on a quest for provisions for the fort.  In case of my success I will return again at the end of a month, or shortly thereafter.  If I fail, and return no more, I still crave thy blessing, and to be remembered without abatement of the love thou hast ever extended to me.  No person within the fort has aided me in this matter, nor has any one of thy garrison knowledge of my departure.

“I remain, dear uncle, with sincerest respect and deepest love, thy nephew,

“Renede Veaux.”