While they were eating, the _voyageurs_ had brought the canoe a short way up the bank, resting it, bottom up, on large stones brought from the shore. Underneath was a soft cot of balsam; over the canoe were blankets, hanging on both sides to the ground. Then Mademoiselle said good-night, with a moment's lingering on the word, and a wistful note in her voice that brought perhaps more sympathy than had the sad eyes of the morning. For after all she was only a girl, and hers was a brave little heart. The three men lay on the slope with hardly a word, looking at the river, now shining like silver through the trees. This new turn in the life of the party was not as yet to be taken familiarly. Father Claude withdrew early to his meditations. Menard stretched out on his back, his hands behind his head, gazing lazily at the leaves overhead, now hanging motionless from the twigs. Danton was sitting up, looking about, and running the young reeds through his fingers. "Danton," Menard said, after a long silence, "I suppose you know that we have something of a problem on our hands." Danton looked over the river. "What have you thought about Mademoiselle?" "I don't understand." "Father Claude and I have been talking this evening about her. I have thought that she does not look any too strong for a hard journey of a hundred and more leagues." "She has little colour," said Danton, cautiously. "It seems to me, Danton, that you can help us." "How?" "What seems to you the cause of the trouble?" "With Mademoiselle? She takes little impression from the kindness of those about her." "Oh, come, Danton. You know better. Even a boy of your age should see deeper than that. You think she slights you; very likely she does. What of that? You are not here to be drawn into a boy-and-girl quarrel with a maid who chances to share our canoe. You are here as my aid, to make the shortest time possible between Quebec and Frontenac. If she were to fall sick, we should be delayed. Therefore she must not fall sick." Danton had plucked a weed, and now was pulling it to pieces, bit by bit. "What do you want me to do?" "Stop this moping, this hanging about. Take hold of the matter. Devise talks, diversions; fill her idle moments; I care not what you do,--within limits, my boy, within limits." "Oh," said Danton, "then you really want me to?" "Certainly. I am too old myself." Danton rose, and walked a few steps away and back. "But she will have none of me, Menard. It is, 'No, with thanks,' or, worse, a shake of the head. If I offer to help, if I try to talk, if I--oh, it is always the same. I am tired of it." Menard smiled in the dark. "Is that your reply to an order from your superior officer, Danton?" The boy stood silent for a moment, then he said, "I beg your pardon, Captain." And with a curious effort at stiffness he wandered off among the trees, and was soon out of Menard's sight.