gratefully crawled upon a cart and lay still, letting it take him
wherever the carter might be going. There were not enough horses and
oxen in Canada to move the supplies for the army from Montreal to
Quebec by land. Transports had to slip down the St. Lawrence by night,
running a gauntlet of vigilant English vessels. Yet whenever the
intendant Bigot wanted to shift anything, he did not lack oxen or
wheels. Jacques did not talk to the carter, but he knew a load of
king's provisions was going out to some favorite of the intendant's
who had been set to guard the northern heights. The stealings of this
popular civil officer were common talk in Quebec.

That long slope called the Plains of Abraham, which swept away from
the summit of the rock toward Cap Rouge, seemed very near the sky.
Jacques watched dusk envelop this place. Patches of faded herbage and
stripped corn, and a few trees only, broke the monotony of its extent.
On the north side, overhanging the winding valley of the St. Charles,
the rock's great shoulder was called Côte Ste. Geneviève. The bald
plain was about a mile wide, but the cart jogged a mile and a half
from Quebec before it reached the tents where its freight was to be
discharged.

Habit had taken the young Repentigny daily to his father's camp,
but this was the first time he had seen the guard along the heights.
Montcalm's soldiers knew him. He was permitted to handle arms. Many
a boy of fifteen was then in the ranks, and children of his age were
growing used to war. His father called it his apprenticeship to the
trade. A few empty houses stood some distance back of the tents; and
farther along the precipice, beyond brush and trees, other guards were
posted. Seventy men and four cannon completed the defensive line which
Montcalm had drawn around the top of the rock. Half the number could