“Dollard, hear what I have to say,” she exclaimed, pressing his temples between her hands. “You meant to leave me behind you at St. Bernard. You forget that the blood of man-warriors, the blood of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, runs in my veins. Doubt not that I shall go with you on this expedition. Do you think I have no courage because I am afraid of mice and lightning?” “I knew not that you were afraid of mice and lightning, my Claire.” “Am I to be the wife of Dollard and have sixteen young men thrust between him and myself, all accounted worthy of martyrdom above me?” “Daughter of a Montmorency!” burst out Dollard with passion; “better than any man on earth! I do you homage--I prostrate myself--I adore you! Yet must I profane your ears with this: no woman can go with the expedition without bringing discredit on it.” “Not even your wife?” “Not even my wife. After absolution in the chapel this morning we are set apart, consecrated to the purpose before us.” Claire dropped her face and said: “I comprehend.” He held her upon his breast the brief remainder of their journey, prostrated as she had not been by the shock of his confession. Mount Royal stood dome-like on Montreal island, a huge shadow glooming out of the north-west upon the little village. After shifting about from a river point of view, those structures composing the town finally settled in their order: the fort, the rough stone seminary of St. Sulpice, the Hôtel-Dieu, the wooden houses standing in a single long row, and eastward the great fortified mill surrounded by a wall. The village itself had neither wall nor palisade. Surrounding dark fields absorbed light and gave back no glint of dew or sprinkling green blade, for the seed-sowing was not yet finished. Black bears squatting or standing about the fields at length revealed themselves as charred stumps and half trees. “You have not told me the route your expedition goes,” whispered Claire. “We go in that direction--up the Ottawa River.” Dollard swept out his arm indicating the west. “There is one thing. Do not place me in the governor’s charge. How can I be a guest, when I would lie night and day before some shrine? Are there no convents in Montreal? A convent is my allotted shelter.” “There are only the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu,” he murmured back. “They, also, would receive you into kind protection; but, my Claire, they are poor. Montreal is not Quebec. Our nuns lived at first in one room. Now they have the hospital; but it is a wooden building, exposed by its situation.” “Let me go to the nuns,” she insisted. “And there is one other thing. Do not tell them who I am. Say nothing about me, that I may have no inquiries to answer concerning our marriage and his lordship the bishop.” “Our nuns of St. Joseph and the Sulpitians of Montreal bear not too much love for the bishop,” said Dollard. “But every wish you have is my wish. I will say nothing to the nuns, and you may tell them only what you will.”