It was good to be alive that afternoon. A speckled patch of sunshine, having pushed its way through the branches across the road, lay spread out on the dusty floor of the forge. On a block just inside the door sat Marc, his lean, dark face,--the Belleisle face, made more hawklike by the blood of his Penobscot grandmother,--all aglow with eagerness. The lazy youngster was not shamed at the sight of my diligence, but talked right on, with a volubility which would have much displeased his Penobscot grandmother. It was pleasant to be back with the lad again, and I was aweary of the war, which of late had kept my feet forever on the move from Louisbourg to the Richelieu. My fire gave a cheerful roar as I heaved upon the bellows, and turned my pike-point in the glowing charcoal. As the roar sighed down into silence there was a merry whirr of wings, and a covey of young partridges flashed across the road. A contented mind and a full stomach do often make a man a fool, or I should have made shift to inquire why the partridges had so sharply taken wing. But I never thought of it. I turned, and let the iron grow cool, and leaned with one foot on the anvil, to hear the boy's talk. My soul was indeed asleep, lulled by content, or I would surely have felt the gleam of the beady eyes that watched me through a chink in the logs beside the chimney. But I felt those eyes no more than if I had been a log myself. "Yes, Father," said Marc, pausing in rich contemplation of the picture in his mind's eye, "you would like her hair! It is unmistakably red,--a chestnut red. But her sister's is redder still!" I smiled at his knowledge of my little weakness for hair of that colour; but not of a woman's hair was I thinking at that moment, or I should surely have made some question about the sister. My mind ran off upon another trail. "And what do the English think they're going to do when de Ramezay comes down upon them?" I inquired. "Do they flatter themselves their tumble-down Annapolis is strong enough to hold us off?" The lad flushed resentfully and straightened himself up on his seat. "Do you suppose, Father, that I was in the fort, and hobnobbing with the Governor?" he asked coldly. "I spoke with none of the English save Prudence and her sister, and the child." "But why not?" said I, unwilling to acknowledge that I had said anything at which he might take offence. "Every one knows your good disposition toward the English, and I should suppose you were in favour at Annapolis. The Governor, I know, makes much of all our people who favour the English cause." Marc stood up,--lean, and fine, and a good half head taller than his father,--and looked at me with eyes of puzzled wrath. "And you think that I, knowing all I do of de Ramezay's plans, would talk to the English about them!" he exclaimed in a voice of keen reproach.