“Yes, General.”

He gathered his bridle, leaned from his saddle, and looked coldly at Boyd and me.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I shall expect you to take Amochol, dead or alive, before this command marches into the Chinisee Castle.  How you are to accomplish this business is your own affair.  I leave you full liberty, except,” turning to Boyd, “you, sir, are not to encumber yourself again with any such force as you now have with you.  Twenty men are too many for a swift and secret affair.  Four is the limit—­ and four of Mr. Loskiel’s Indians.”

He sat still, gnawing at his lip for a moment, then: 

“I am sorry that, through no fault apparently of your own, this Sorcerer, Amochol, escaped.  But, gentlemen, the service recognizes only success.  I am always ready to listen to how nearly you failed, when you have succeeded; I have no interest in hearing how nearly you succeeded when you have failed.  That is all, gentlemen.”

We stood at salute while he wheeled, and, followed by his considerable staff, walked his fine horse away toward the train of artillery which stood near by, the gun-teams harnessed and saddled, the guns limbered up, drivers and cannoneers in their saddles and seats.

“Well,” said Boyd heavily, “shall we be about this matter of Amochol?”

“Yes....  Will you aid me in placing Madame de Contrecoeur and her daughter in the wagon assigned them?”

He nodded, and together we started back toward the Vale Yndaia in silence.

After a long while he looked up at me and said: 

“I know her now.”

“What?”

“I recognize your pretty Lois de Contrecoeur.  For weeks I have been troubled, thinking of her and how I should have known her face.  And last night, lying north of Catharines-town, it came to me suddenly,”

I was silent.

“She is the ragged maid of the Westchester hills,” he said.

“She is the noblest maid that ever breathed in North America,” I said.

“Yes, Loskiel....  And, that being true, you are the fittest match for her the world could offer.”

I looked up, surprised, and flushed; and saw how colourless and wasted his face had grown, and how in his eyes all light seemed quenched.  Never have I gazed upon so hopeless and haunted a visage as he turned to me.

“I walk the forests like a damned man,” he said, “already conscious of the first hot breath of hell....  Well—­ I had my chance, Loskiel.”

“You have it still.”

But he said no more, walking beside me with downcast countenance and brooding eyes fixed on our long shadows that led us slowly west.

CHAPTER XXI

 CHINISEE CASTLE

For twelve days our army, marching west by north, tore its terrible way straight through the smoking vitals of the Iroquois Empire, leaving behind it nearly forty towns and villages and more than two hundred cabins on fire; thousands and thousands of bushels of grain burning, thousands of apple, peach, pear, and plum trees destroyed, thousands of acres of pumpkins, beans, peas, corn, potatoes, beets, turnips, carrots, watermelons, muskmelons, strawberry, black-berry, raspberry shrubs crushed and rotting in the trampled gardens under the hot September sun.