When Yvonne stood at last upon the deck of the ship of her desire, her heart, without warning, began a far too vehement gratulation. Her cloak oppressed her. She dropped it, and stood leaning upon Mother Pêche’s shoulder. She grew suddenly pale, breathing with effort; and one hand caught at her side.

The apparition made a wondrous stir on deck. To those who had ever heard of such a being, it appeared that the Witch of the Moon, in all the indescribable magic of her beauty, had been translated into flesh. Men seemed upon the instant to find an errand to that quarter of the ship. Captain Eliphalet Wrye, who had been watching with great unconcern a transfer whose significance seemed to him quite ordinary, came forward in haste, eager to do the honours of his ship, and marvelling beyond measure at such a guest. Captain Eliphalet had traded much among the French of Acadie and New France. He knew well the difference 247between the seigneurial and the habitant classes; and this knowledge was just what he needed to make his bewilderment complete.

“Here’s the captain of the ship coming to see you, chérie!” whispered Mother Pêche, squeezing the girl’s arm significantly. Yvonne steadied herself with an effort, and turned a brilliant glance upon this important stranger. With his rough blue reefing-jacket, extremely broad shoulders, and excessively broad yellow-brown beard, Captain Eliphalet looked to her just as she thought a merchant-captain ought to look. She therefore approved of him, and awaited his approach with a smile that put him instantly at ease. As he came up, however, hat in hand and with considered phrases on his lips, the old woman forestalled him.

“Let me present you, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said she, stepping forward with a courtesy, “to my mistress, Mademoiselle de Lamourie, of Lamourie Place.”

“It is but ashes, alas! monsieur,” interrupted Yvonne, holding out her hand.

“The ship is yours, Mademoiselle de Lamourie!” he exclaimed, and bowed with a gesture of relinquishing everything to her command. It was not for nothing Captain Eliphalet had visited Montreal and Quebec.

Yvonne dropped her lids for a second, and shook her head rebukingly.

248“That is not English, monsieur,” she protested, “but it is very nice of you. I should not know what to do with a ship just now; but I like our little pleasant French fictions.”

Captain Eliphalet, however, could be French for a moment only.

“But you, mademoiselle, you—how comes such a one as you to be sailing away into exile?”

Yvonne’s long lashes drooped again, and this time did not rise so quickly.

“I have reason to think, monsieur,” she answered gravely, “that dear friends and kinsfolk of mine are on this ship, themselves going, fettered, into exile. I could not stay behind and let them go so. But enough of myself, monsieur, for the present,” she went on, speaking more rapidly. “I want to ease the anxieties of these poor souls who have come with me. Is there among your prisoners a young man known as ‘Petit Joliet’? Here is his mother come to look for him.”

Captain Eliphalet summoned a soldier who stood near, and put the question to him in English.

“There is one by the name of Franse Joliet on the roll, captain,” answered the red-coat, saluting.

“That’s he! That’s my boy!” cried his mother, catching the name. She had been waiting close by with a strained, fixed face, which now went to pieces in a medley of smiles and tears, like a reflection on still water suddenly broken. She 249clutched Yvonne’s hands, blessed and kissed them, and then rushed off vaguely as if to find Petit Joliet in durance behind some pile of ropes or water-butt.

“And Lenoir—Tamin Lenoir,” continued Yvonne, her voice thrilling with joy over her task, “and Michel Savarin. Are they, too, in the hold?”

“Yes, miss,” said the soldier, saluting again, and never taking his eyes from her face. She turned to the two women in their restless fringe of clingers; and they, more sober because more hampered in their delight, thanked her devoutly, and moved off to learn what more they could elsewhere.

Meanwhile another figure had drawn near—a figure not unknown to Yvonne’s eyes.

When she first appeared Lieutenant Shafto, the English officer in command of the guard, was pacing the quarter deck, stiffly remote and inexpressibly bored. He had two ambitions in life—the one, altogether laudable and ordinary, to be a good officer in the king’s service; the other, more distinguished and uncommon, to be quoted as an example of dress and manners to his fellow-men. In London he had achieved in this direction sufficient success to establish him steadfastly in his purpose. Ordered to Halifax with his regiment, he had there found the field for his talent 250sorely straitened. At Grand Pré, far worse: it was reduced to the dimensions of a back-door plot. Here on shipboard it seemed wholly to have vanished. Nevertheless, for practice, and for the prese............