propitiation.

Frontenac opened the door and stood upon the doorstep. His head almost
reached the overhanging straw thatch.

"What is the alarm, my men?"

"Your excellency," the subaltern answered, "it was nothing but a dog.
It came down from Montmorenci, and some of the men shot it."

"Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène," declared Frontenac, lowering his plumed
hat, "has just died for New France."

* * * * *

Gaspard stayed out on his river front until he felt half frozen. The
old habitant had not been so disturbed and uncomfortable since his
family died of smallpox. Phips's vessels lay near the point of Orleans
Island, a few portholes lighting their mass of gloom, while two red
lanterns aloft burned like baleful eyes at the lost coast of Canada.
Nothing else showed on the river. The distant wall of Levis palisades
could be discerned, and Quebec stood a mighty crown, its gems all
sparkling. Behind Gaspard, Beauport was alive. The siege was virtually
over, and he had not set foot off his farm during Phips's invasion of
New France. He did not mind sleeping on the floor, with his heels to
the fire. But there were displacements and changes and sorrows which
he did mind.

"However," muttered the old man, and it was some comfort to the vague
aching in his breast to formulate one fact as solid as the heights