“At last the daylight came again, and as the darkness disappeared our anxieties seemed to disappear with it. Everybody took courage excepting Madame Marguerite, wife of the Sieur Fontaine, who, being extremely timid, as all Parisian women are, asked her husband to carry her to another fort. [A silly request, certainly.] He said, ‘I will never abandon this fort while Mademoiselle Madeleine is here.’ I answered him that I would rather die than give it up to the enemy, and that it was of the greatest importance that they should never get possession of any French fort, because if they took _one_ they would think they could get others, and would grow more bold and presumptuous than ever. “I may say, with truth, that I did not eat nor sleep for twice twenty-four hours. I did not go once into my father’s house, but kept always on the bastion, or went to the block-house to see how the people there were behaving. I always kept a cheerful and smiling face, and encouraged my little company with the hope of speedy succor. “We were one week in constant alarm, with the enemy always about us. At last M. de la Monnerie, a lieutenant sent by M. de Callières, arrived in the night with forty men. [He came down the river.] As he did not know whether the fort was taken or not, he approached as silently as possible. One of our sentinels, hearing a slight sound, cried, ‘Who goes there?’ I was at the time dozing, with my head on a table and my gun lying across my arms. The sentinel told me that he heard a voice from the river. I went up at once to the bastion to see whether it was of Indians or Frenchmen. I demanded, ‘Who goes there?’ One of them replied, ‘We are Frenchmen; it is De la Monnerie, come to bring you help.’ I caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw M. de la Monnerie I saluted him and said, ‘Monsieur, I resign my arms to you.’ He answered, gallantly, ‘Mademoiselle, they are in good hands.’ ‘Better than you suppose,’ I returned. He inspected the fort and found everything in order and a sentinel on each bastion. ‘It is time to relieve them, monsieur,’ said I; ‘we have not been off our bastions for a week.’” M. de la Monnerie in astonished admiration took charge of the relieved fort. The heroine’s work was over. The savages fled, and not long after they were captured near Lake Champlain, and some twenty persons they had made prisoners at Verchères were brought safely back. The father and mother of Madeleine came from Montreal and Quebec, and heard the story of her valor and coolness with rapturous praise. She grew up to be a woman, receiving for her life a pension from the King of France as a mark of honor, and she died at an advanced age. VIII HOW MARC WAS MADE CAPTAIN A Rescue from the “Lords of the Woods” in 1695