The Lady of Fort St. John

a sentinel was set for the night before

dle was also behind the screen, and it threw out Antonia's shadow, and showed her disordered flax-white hair flung free of its cap and falling to its length. Marie sat down in the little world of

r is gone, Anton

ed, magnifying the yo

sent him off on his

h cold welcome from his own countrywoman that he chose

her arms extended and threw herself on the floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in fu

he fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here t

are not see

you not see Mo

or and rested her head and

ou lov

t I loved him? No. It would b

nd it is plain he ha

g courted m

s a wolf!-this Hollandais gentleman who hath saved

pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes than any other ma

do you run

cannot spin or knit or sew when he is by; I must need

e draws one's hea

lose my feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was

your husband?"

ands, madame. Mynheer Br

d me much of Monsie

k of him now, madame.

t afraid of

f him living. I regar

is not to be rega

orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he married me, and became the best husba

s that you love M

ak that wor

ve him marry

ed on a long journey to Boston, where I had kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I had not met you. It was fortunate for me

a little shake, "how pleased you

nia burst again into frenzied s

he only person I dar

w's damp hair with the quieti

as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military peril, and contact with riper civilizations, t

u take an oath not to

me, he ne

me he left y

to me. For I had neit

und you by

t all,

f Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord-if I were dead

at that imp

close to her friend's knees. "Madame, I can

oken it must be, to hold you wedded to a dea

feet, but stood dreadi

nth," she explained, "and I have lo

d resisted that century's current of superstition. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whate

open life of the Dutch widow was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved girlhood passed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped at

untless lines which denote approaching age. It was the right hand of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively slim, with shape

d and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness beyond t

ot be, A

hispered Antonia, subduing herself to

way from it. Come out of this ro