They assisted him in the severer tasks which were allotted him to fulfil--gave him their company whenever this was possible, while he was engaged in the execution of his most cheerless duties, and soothed his sorrows by the expression of their almost unanimous sympathies. Nor did they always withhold their bitter denunciations of the miserable despotism under which he suffered, and which they feared. Dark hints of remedy were spoken, brows frowned at the mention of the wrongs of their companion, and the head shaken ominously, when words of threatening significance were uttered--appealed gratefully to certain bitter desires which had taken root in the mind of the victim. But these sympathies, though grateful, were of small amount in comparison with another source of consolation, which contributed to sustain Guernache in his tribulation. This was found in the secret companionship of his young and beautiful Indian wife. Denied to see him at the village of Audusta, the fond and fearless woman determined to seek him at all hazards in his own domain. She stole away secretly to the fortress of the Huguenots. Long and earnest was the watch which she maintained upon its portals, from the thickets of the neighboring wood. Here, vigilant as the sentinel that momently expects his foe, she harbored close, in waiting for the beloved one. Her quick instincts had already taught her the true cause of his denial, and of her disappointment; and her Indian lessons had made that concealment, which she now believed to be necessary to her purpose, a part of the habitual policy of her people. She showed herself to none of the people of the fortress. She suspected them all; she had no faith but in the single one. And he, at length, came forth, unaccompanied, in the prosecution of an occasional labor--that of cutting and procuring wood. She suffered him to make his way into the forests--to lose sight of the fortress, and, with a weary spirit and a wounded soul, to begin his lonely labors with the axe. Then did she steal behind him, and beside him; and when he moaned aloud--supposing that he had no auditor--how startling fell upon his ear the sweet, soft whisper of that precious voice which he had so lovingly learned to distinguish from all others. He turned with a gush of rapturous delight, and, weeping, she rushed into his arms, pouring forth, in a wild cry, upon his breast, the whole full volume of her warm, devoted heart! [12] Charlevoix thus describes Captain Albert: "Le Commandant de Charles-Fort étoit un homme de main, et qui ne manquoit pas absolument de conduite, mais il étoit brutal jusqu'à la férocité, et ne sçavoit pas meme garder les bienséances........ Il punissoit les moindres fautes, and toujours avec excès, &c."--N. France, Liv. 1, p. 51.