England, had often praised. Le Rossignol followed these two ladies across the hall, alternately aping the girlish motion of Antonia and her elder's massive progress. She considered the Dutch gentlewoman a sweet interloper who might, on occasions, be pardoned; but Lady Dorinda was the natural antagonist of the dwarf in Fort St. John. Marie herself seated her mother-in-law, with the graceful deference of youth to middle age and of present power to decayed grandeur. Lady Dorinda was not easy to make comfortable. The New World was hardly her sphere. In earlier life, she had learned in the school of the royal Stuarts that some people are, by divine right, immeasurably better than others,—and experience had thrust her down among those unfortunate others.

Seeing there were strange men in the hall, Antonia divined that the prisoners from the keep had been brought up to supper. But Lady Dorinda settled her chin upon her necklace, and sighed a large sigh that priests and rough men-at-arms should weary eyes once used to revel in court pageantry. She looked up at the portrait of her dead husband, which hung on the wall. He had been created the first knight of Acadia; and though this honor came from her king, and his son refused to inherit it after him, Lady Dorinda believed that only the misfortunes of the La Tours had prevented her being a colonial queen.

"Our chaplain being absent in the service of Sieur de la Tour," spoke Marie, "will monsieur, in his own fashion, bless this meal?"

Father Jogues spread the remnant of his hands, but Antonia did not hear a word he breathed. She was again in Fort Orange. The Iroquois stalked up hilly paths and swarmed around the plank huts of Dutch traders. With the savages walked this very priest, their patient drudge until some of them blasphemed, when he sternly and fearlessly denounced the sinners.

Supper was scarcely begun when the Swiss lieutenant came again into the hall and saluted his lady.

"What troubles us, Klussman?" she demanded.

"There is a stranger outside."

"What does he want?"

"Madame, he asks to be admitted to Fort St. John."

"Is he alone? Hath he a suspicious look?"

"No, madame. He bears himself openly and like a man of consequence."

"How many followers has he?"

"A dozen, counting Indians. But all of them he sends back to camp with our Etchemins."

"And well he may. We want no strange followers in the barracks. Have you questioned him? Whence does he come?"

"From Fort Orange, in the New Netherlands, madame."

"He is then Hollandais." Marie turned to Antonia Bronck, and was jarred by her blanching face.

"What is it, Antonia? You have no enemy to follow you into Acadia?"

The flaxen head was shaken for reply.

"But what brings a man from Fort Orange here?"

"There be nearly a hundred men in Fort Orange," whispered Antonia.

"He says," announced the Swiss, "that he is cousin and agent of the seignior they call the patroon, and his name is Van Corlaer."

"Do you know him, Antonia?"

"Yes."

"And is he kindly disposed to you?"

"He was the friend of my husband, Jonas Bronck," trembled Antonia.

"Admit him," said Marie to her lieutenant.

"Alone, madame?"

"With all his followers, if he wills it. And bring him as quickly as you can to this table."

"We need Edelwald to manage these affairs," added the lady of the fort, as her subaltern went out. "The Swiss is faithful, but he has manners as rugged as his mountains."