It was after 12 o’clock before Dollard could take Claire’s hands and talk with her a few unoccupied minutes. When women intrude upon men’s great labors they risk destroying their own tender ideals, but this daughter of a hundred soldiers had watched her husband all day in raptures of pride. To be near him in the little arena of his sacrifice was worth her heart-chilling vigil, worth her toilsome journey, fully worth the supreme price she must yet pay. Earth from the breastworks, distributed by thuds of occasional Iroquois bullets, spattered impartially both Claire and Dollard. They had no privacy. Guttural Huron and Algonquin murmurs and the nervous intonation of French voices would have broken into all ordinary conversation. But looking deeply at each other, and unconsciously breathing in the same cadences, they had their moment of talk as if standing on a peak together. There was a lonesome bird in the woods uttering three or four falling notes, which could be heard at intervals when not drowned by any rising din of the Iroquois. “They sent a canoe down river this afternoon,” said Dollard, “evidently for their reinforcements from below.” “How long do you think we can hold out?” inquired Claire. “Until we have broken their force. We must do that.” “I was on an island at the mouth of the Ottawa when you passed, my commandant. That was purgatory to me.” “Since you reached us,” said Dollard, “I have accepted you without question and without remorse. I am stupefied. I love you. But, Claire, to what a death I have brought you!” “It is a death befitting well the daughter of the stout-hearted Constable of France. But do not leave me again, Dollard!” “The Iroquois shall not touch you alive, Claire,” he promised. “I am ready shriven,” she said, smiling. “Except of one fault. That will I now confess,--a fault committed against the delicacy of women,--and I hated the abbess and the bishop because they detected me in it. I came to New France for love of you, my soldier. Could I help following you from world to world?” “O Claire!” trembled Dollard, taking his hat off and standing uncovered before her. “But you should not have known this until we were old--until you had seen me Madame des Ormeaux many years, dignified and very, very discreet, so that no breath could discredit me save this mine own confession.” During four days the Iroquois constantly harassed the fort while waiting for their reënforcements, enraged more each day at their own losses and at the handful of French and Indians who stood in the way of their great raid upon New France. Hungry, thirsty, and giddy from loss of sleep, the allies in the fort stood at their loop-holes and poured out destruction. Their supplies were gone, excepting dry hominy, which they could not swallow without water.