"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered
Marie.

The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer appeared
with men at his back.

"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"

"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be
more in the loft above."

Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead. A
light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its
search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of
silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the baby.
Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and carried it
to the hearth.

"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.

She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him
a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The
stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a
garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the
sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely
believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.

"Will you give no account of yourself?"

"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her cares