He disdained my hand, and held his arms wide.  “All is well with us.  But you——­ We feared the Iroquois wolf had devoured you.”

And I had thought the man capable of petty spite.  I dropped on my knees to him.  “Father Carheil, I grieve for what I did, yet I could not have done otherwise.”

He drew back a little and rumpled his thin hair with a bloodless hand.  His face was frowning, but his restless, brilliant eyes were full of amusement.

“So your conscience is not at ease?  My son, you are as strong as a Flemish work horse.  I limped to mass for the next fortnight, and my gown was in fiddle-strings,—­you may send me another.  As for the rest, we need new altar hangings.  Now, come, come, come.  Tell us what has happened.”

And there it ended.  One makes enemies in strange ways in this world and friends in stranger.  I should not have said that the way to win a man’s heart was to bind him like a Christmas fowl and then leave him with his back on the sand.

The priest’s cry had waked the garrison, and the officers came running.  Cadillac, stout as he was, was in the lead.  I knew, from the press of his arms about me, that he had thought me dead.

“Is Madame de Montlivet safe?  Are the Senecas here?” I clamored at him.

A babel of affirmatives arose.  Yes, madame was there.  The Senecas were there.  So the English prisoner had proved to be a woman.  Had I known it at the time?  I was a sly dog.  All tongues talked at once, while I fought for a hearing.  We turned toward the commandant’s.  The door of the nearest cabin opened and Starling came out.  He did not look toward us, and he walked the other way.  The woman walked beside him.

A hush clapped down on us as if our very breathing were strangled.  A lane opened in front of me.  I took one step in it, then stopped.  There was the woman.  I had followed her through wounds and hardship.  Through the long nights I had watched the stars and planned for our meeting.  But when I would have gone to her my feet were manacled, for this was not the woman of my dreams.  This woman wore trailing silk, and her hair was coifed.  And she was walking away from me; no instinct told her that I was near.  She was walking away, and Starling walked beside her.  I did not remember that I was wounded and a sorry figure; I did not remember that I was dressed in skins.  I remembered that I had married this woman by force, and that she had once wished of her own accord to marry Starling.  And now she walked with him; she wore a gown he must have brought; she had forgiven him.  A hot spark ran from my heart to my brain.  I turned and started toward the beach.

I heard a breath from the throats around me and a stretching of cramped limbs.  Cadillac’s arm dropped round my shoulders, and I felt the pressure of his fingers.

“Come to my quarters,” he said.  “You have mail waiting.  And we will find you something to wear.  Dubisson is near your size.”