He was the Baron de Beauchatel, with the gold cross of St. Louis dangling on the lapelle of the gay white uniform of the Grenadiers of Guienne. Having lost his way in the forest, he now sought a guide to the camp of Montcalm; but the dead mother caught his eye at the moment he peered into the obscurity of the hut. "Mon Dieu! what have we here?" he asked, with surprise. "The squaw and papoose of a pale chief," replied the apparently unmoved Indian. "Dead--a lady, too!" exclaimed the French officer, stooping over her with a commiseration that was greatly increased when he discovered that she was young and beautiful. He gently pressed her thin white hand, and lifted her soft black hair. "And this is her child?" Orono nodded. "Almost newly born--how calmly it sleeps! The poor infant--alone in this wilderness--Tête Dieu! it is frightful! Tell me all about this, Iroquois, and I will reward you handsomely with a new English clasp-knife, a bottle of eau de vie, a blanket, or whatever else your refined taste teaches you to prize most." In his own language, by turns soft and guttural, Orono related to the baron all that he knew of the white woman; that she had twice saved his life, and that he, in gratitude, had protected her from the Iroquois; but he had no power over the Great Spirit. The baron was a humane and gallant French officer of the old days of the monarchy. He had been a gay fellow some few years before, and had been sent to America (according to Parisian gossip) because he had been too favourably noticed by Madame de Pompadour; but he had a good and tender heart; thus, the story of the poor mother, and the helplessness of her orphan, stirred him deeply. By the whole aspect of the dead, and the remains of her attire, he suspected that her rank and position in life had been good--a lady at least. A ring upon the fourth finger of her left hand, bearing the name of her husband in Gaelic, he gently removed; he then cut off some of her fine black hair, and, after making a few memoranda descriptive of her person, he bargained with the Indian that he should give up the child for a few francs. This the Iroquois at once agreed to do, and, with the assistance of the baron, Mary was wrapped in furs and buried under a tree on the sequestered shore of the Horican. To Beauchatel it seemed strange and repugnant that a Christian woman should be laid there without a prayer or a blessing, on the rough mould that covered her pale attenuated form, her pains and her sorrows; but it was long since _he_ had prayed; yet, with an impulse of piety, he cut on the bark of the tree, which covered the place where she lay, a large cross, and raising his hat retired. The act was in itself a prayer! "Can I now do aught for you?" he asked of Orono. The Indian mournfully shook his head, and then said, "Give me a new musket, for the time is coming--the time that has been foretold." "By whom?" "The sachems, the pawaws, and the old men of the Iroquois."