Some of the young Frenchmen made a rush to the river, protected by the guns of the fort, and brought all the water they could thus carry. They also dug within the palisade and reached a little clayey moisture which helped to cool their mouths. Among the Iroquois were renegade Hurons who had been adopted by the Five Nations. During these four days of trial the renegades shouted to their brethren in the fort to come over and surrender to the Iroquois. Seven or eight hundred more warriors were hurrying from the mouth of the Richelieu River, and not a blackened coal was to be left where the fort and the Frenchmen stood. “Come over,” tempted these Hurons. “The Iroquois will receive you as brothers. Will you stay there and die for the sake of a few Frenchmen?” First one, then two more, then three at a time, the famished braves of Annahotaha slipped over the intrenchment and deserted, in spite of his rage and exhortations. On the fifth day, an hour before dawn, a hand of auroral light spread its fingers across the sky from west to east. Betwixt these finger-rays were dark spaces having no stars, but through the pulsing medium of every gigantic finger the constellations glittered. Many signs were seen in the heavens during the colonial years of New France, but nothing like the blessed hand stretched over the Long Saut. That day rapids and forests appeared to rock with the vibration of savage yells, for soon after daylight the expected force arrived. La Mouche had sulked some time at the loop-hole where he was stationed with Annahotaha. Massawippa’s back was towards him during all this period of distress. She never saw that he was thirsty and that his cracked lips bled. If she was solicitous for anybody except the stalwart chief, it was for that white wife of Dollard, who stood always near Dollard when not doing what could be done for the wounded. La Mouche had no stomach for dying an unrewarded death. Dogged hatred of his false position and of his tardy suit had grown large within him. He therefore left his loop-hole while Annahotaha’s gun was emptied, leaped on top of the palisade, and stretched his dark face back an instant to interrogate Massawippa’s quick eye. A motion of her head might yet bring him back. But did she think that he meant to be killed like a dog to whom the bone of a good word has never been thrown? “My father!” shouted the girl, pointing with a finger which pierced La Mouche’s soul. “Shoot that coward; shoot him down!” Annahotaha seized the long pistol from his side and discharged it at his deserting nephew. But La Mouche in the same instant dropped outside and ran over to the Iroquois. There remained now only the Frenchmen, Annahotaha, and the four Algonquins.