There was in his glance which said:  “Madame, I offered to make you my wife; now I shall make you something less.”  And seeing the Chevalier stirring inside the fort, he mused:  “My faith, but that old marquis must have had an eye.  The fellow’s mother must have been a handsome wench.”

Once the vicomte came secretly upon D’Herouville, Fremin, Pauquet, and the woodsman named The Fox because of his fiery hair and beard, peaked face and beady eyes.  When the party broke up, the vicomte emerged from his hiding place, wearing a smile which boded no good to whatever plot or plan D’Herouville had conceived.  And that same night he approached each of D’Herouville’s confederates and spoke.  What passed only they themselves knew; but when the vicomte left them they were irrevocably his.

“Eye of the bull!” murmured Corporal Fremin, “but this vicomte is much of a man.  As for the Chevalier, what the devil! his fingers have been sunken into my throat.”

A mile from the mission, toward the north, of the lake, stood a hut of Indian construction.  It had been erected long before the mission.  It served as a half-way to the savages after days of hunting in the northern confines of the country of the Onondagas.  Here the savages would rest of a night before carrying the game to the village in the hills.  It was well hidden from the eyes, thick foliage and vines obscuring it from the view of those at the mission.  But there was a well worn path leading to it.  It was here that tragedy entered into the comedy of these various lives.

Indian summer.  The leaves rustled and sighed upon the damp earth.  The cattails waved their brown tassels.  Wild ducks passed in dark flocks.  A stag sent a challenge across the waters.  The lord-like pine looked lordlier than ever among the dismantled oak and maple.  The brown nuts pattered softly to the ground, and the chatter of the squirrel was heard.  The Chevalier stood at the door of the hunting hut, and all the varying glories of the dying year stirred the latent poetry in his soul.  In his hand he held a slip of paper which he read and reread.  There was a mixture of joy and puzzlement in his eyes.  Diane.  It had a pleasant sound; what had she to say that necessitated this odd trysting place?  He glanced at the writing again.  Evidently she had written it in a hurry.  What, indeed, had she to say?  They had scarce exchanged a word since the day in the hills when he told her that she was not honest.

A leaf drifted lazily down from the overhanging oak, and another and still another; and he listened.  There was in the air the ghostly perfume of summer; and he breathed.  He was still young.  Sorrow had aged his thought, not his blood; and he loved this woman with his whole being, dishonest though she might be.  He carried the note to his lips.  She would be here at four.  What she had to tell him must be told here, not at the settlement.  There was the woman and the caprice.  Strange that she had written when early that morning it had been simple to speak.  And the Indian who had given him the note knew nothing.