Mellow relief, powerful as sunshine, softened the swarthy pallor of Jacques’s face. He caught his candle from the chimney shelf and jammed its charred wick against a glowing coral knot in the log. “Madame, that’s m’sieur at the gate. I know his stroke and his call. I’ll bring him up.” No man can surely say, with all his ancestry at his back and his unproved nature within, what he can or cannot do in certain crises of his life. “What is it, m’sieur?” exclaimed Jacques as he let Dollard through the gate. “We went scarce a quarter of a league. I came back because I cannot leave her without telling her; it was a cowardly act!” exclaimed Dollard, darting into the house. “She must go with me to Montreal.” XII. DOLLARD’S CONFESSION. IF Dollard was surprised at finding Claire standing by the fire dressed for her journey, he gave himself no time for uttering it, but directed Jacques to bring down madame’s boxes and to wake Louise. “One casket will be enough, Jacques,” countermanded madame; “the one which has been opened. If there is such haste, the others can be sent hereafter. As for my poor Louise, I will not have her waked; this is but her second night’s sleep on land. Some one can be found in Montreal to attend me, and I shall see her again soon.” Jacques shuffled down from his master’s apartment, carrying the luggage on his shoulder and his candle in one hand. Dollard waited for him, to say aside: “In three weeks come to Montreal and ask for your lady at the governor’s house. Subject yourself to her orders thenceforward.” “Yes, m’sieur,” grunted Jacques. Again his candle on the twisted staircase caused great shadows to stalk through the cellar gloom--Claire’s shadow stretching forward a magnified head at its dense future; Dollard’s shadow towering so high as to be bent at right angles and flattened on the joists above. Once more were the bars put up, this time shutting two inmates out of the seigniory house. Dollard hurried his wife into the boat. One Indian held the boat to the beach, another stored the luggage, and immediately they dropped into their places and took the oars, and the boat was off. It was a silent night and very little breeze flowed along the surface of the water. The moon seemed lost walking so far down the west sky. She struck a path of gold crosswise of Lake St. Louis, and it grew with the progress of the boat, still traveling downriver and twinkling like a moving pavement of burnished disks. Going with the current, the Hurons had little need to labor, and the gush of their oars came at longer intervals than during the up-stream voyage.