sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's
men sauntered through the vanishing town, trying at times to strike some
spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.

Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in
which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it
from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer
shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in
tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and
those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of
going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues
and his donné, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was
Zélie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulking in
the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the
rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into
his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct
which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and
attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.

"Has this child been baptized?" he inquired of Zélie on the path down
from the fort.

She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with
fervor she could not restrain,--

"I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head,
and but little to its body, before my lady took it."

"But hath it not believing parents?"