some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one
of the men came from the inner room.

"Good-night, madame," she said.

"Good-night, Zélie," answered a voice within.

"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"

"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for
our voyage home."

The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to
her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.

This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.

Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service
in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern
cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the
sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor
had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of
twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the
neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a
pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above
the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a