Far other was poor Margot’s lot. Hers was that of endurance—the hardest of all. The day of her parting from Gabriel went heavily by; and when in the waning afternoon she crouched in the long marsh grass while the tide fell lower and lower and still no craft appeared upon the waters, she wrung her hands in helpless anguish, knowing that in two short hours neither boat nor canoe could pass up or down the river; for of the Missaguash nothing would remain but deep red mud. Yet Gabriel came not, and the precious minutes flew. The Herbes and herself, pressing far into the woods in the hope of returning ere long to peaceful English soil, had missed the weighing of the anchor at early dawn and the skimming seaward of the white-winged ship bearing Margot’s fondest hope with it. So the girl crouched in the grass and waited, while the wife of Louis built a fire upon the firmer land and cooked from their scanty store of provisions. Then at last, breasting the falling tide, a canoe came creeping up the Missaguash; and though it came not down, as it should have done from the English camp, Margot rose to her feet, and shading her eyes from the westering sun, watched it with beating heart and a prayer on her lips. Nearer and nearer—but that was no bright head bending over the paddle, but a dark and swarthy one—the head of an Indian; and it was Jean Jacques who presently grounded his little vessel, and slipped through the long grass toward Margot, who was waiting sick at heart. The Micmac spoke first. “Maiden,” he said, “Wild Deer has sailed toward the setting of the sun. The braves of his nation commanded and it was for Wild Deer to obey. But the Micmac has found for thee a shelter until the youth comes again. Let us go quickly, ere the river too follow the sun.” Bitter indeed was the disappointment, but Margot faced it bravely. After all, though their fashion of faith was no longer the same, were not she and Gabriel both in the hands of the one God? “I will go with thee, Jean Jacques,” she said, after a moment’s struggle with her grief; “but Louis and Marie, they too desire to go. Whither do we follow thee?” The Indian pointed down the Missaguash, where upon the opposite shore, removed from the burned settlement some two or three miles and concealed from it by a bend in the river, pleasant farmhouses and cultivated acres brooded in the hush of evening. “And those good people will receive me?” The Indian nodded. “And I can work,” she added eagerly. “I can work well, Jean Jacques.” It was true. The slender, dark-eyed maiden, though of a frailer build than the majority of Acadian women, possessed the ambition they so often lacked. “Come, then,” urged Jean Jacques. “The white man and his squaw they must wait. The waters of the Missaguash droop in their bed.” “Wilt thou come for the white man and his wife at the rising of the tide?” The Indian grunted in acquiescence. “And thou, Jean Jacques, whither wilt thou go?” He pointed southward.