“You can say this to poor Adam Dollard, an obscure soldier of the province?”
“In these few days,” replied the girl, laughing, and she threw the light of her topaz eyes half towards him, “the way they call your name in this new country has become to me like a title.”
“You shall have more than a title,” burst out Dollard. “Heaven helping me, you shall yet have a name that will not die!”
They passed through the gate of the palisade, Jacques and Louise following with the loads of the expedition. To insure its safety the boat was afterwards dragged within the palisade.
The censitaire in charge, with his wife at his shoulder, stood grinning at Jacques’s approach.
“Thou got’st thyself a wife, hé, my pretty Jacques?”
“That did I, bonhomme Papillon. And a good wife, and a stout wife, and a handsome. Thou ’lt want to go to Quebec market thyself when the Indians carry off Joan.”
“Let me see him go to the Quebec market!” cried Joan, shaking her knuckled fist under his ear.
“It would trouble thee little to lose sight of him, Joan. But his coming back with such freight--it is _that_ would fire thee hotter than Iroquois torches. Alas, my children,” Jacques said, letting down his load inside the gate, “I bring much, but I leave much behind. If I am to hold this seigniory while my commandant is away, and feed ye both and my new wife, to say naught of Mademoiselle de Granville and our great lady, I need the cattle and swine and fowls which our king gave me for dower and my seignior made me throw over my shoulder.”
“But I thought,” said Louise, in dismay, “that thou had’st such stores of vegetables and other provisions here.”
“Have no fear, my spouse. Thou shalt see how this garrison is provisioned. But what prudent man can drop without a sigh the moiety of his wife’s fortune? Here are Papillon and Joan, who hold the next island under our seignior. And here, timid Joan, is thy soldierly new neighbor Louise Goffinet, who squealed not in the dangers of the river.”
“Wert thou afraid?” Joan asked Louise, kindly.
“I was until I saw Madame des Ormeaux was not. And the Indians have a wonderful skill.”
“Did the commandant also marry her at the wife market?” pressed Joan, walking by Louise’s side behind the men. “She is surely the fairest woman in New France. I could have crawled before her when she gave me a smile.”