The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec. Trevena John

the boy's passion.

      "With the savage Algonquins in the far-away lands, the enemies of the Iroquois. And with the Frenchmen whom my father hates."

      More the boy would have said, but at that moment the lord of the place returned with a sheathed sword and a velvet belt. The sword, a short blade like that which he himself wore, as slight almost as a whip, he tested on the ground, and in his stern manner pointed out a spot upon the summit of the knoll where the moonlight played free from shadow, saying, "Stand there."

      The boy obeyed, stretching out an expectant hand.

      His father gave him the virgin sword, fixing him with his stern eye, and suddenly whipped out his own blade, and exclaimed, in a voice which was meant to strike terror into the child's heart, "On guard!"

      The boy did not wince, but threw up his point like an old soldier, and his face became wild when along his right arm there thrilled for the first time an indescribable strength and joy as the two blades met.

      By instinct he caught the point, and parried the edge. By instinct he lunged at the vital spots, stepping forward, darting aside, falling back, never resting upon the wrong foot nor misjudging the distance. His father, who tested him so severely, smiled despite himself, and Richard saw the smile, and, confident that he could pass his father's guard, stepped out and took up the attack in a reckless endeavour to inflict a wound upon his teacher's arm.

      The stern soldier of fortune played with the boy under the rushing north wind and the swaying light of the moon, while the mother stood near on the slope of the knoll, her eyes flashing, her nostrils distended, her bosom heaving with the passion of the sword-play. She noted how nobly the boy responded to his blood – the enduring blood of the high-bred Cayuga mingled with the fighting strain of the Englishman. She watched the sureness of his hand, the boldness of his eye. She saw how readily the use of the sword came to him, and once she sighed, because her husband had made her Christian, and she remembered the warning of the unseen God which her lord had lately repeated, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

      A cry broke from her lips. Her husband's sword flashed suddenly across her vision, drew back, lowered, and fell like the falcon which had made its blow, and the point sprinkled a few drops of blood upon the bleached grass.

      "Thomas," she exclaimed in her native tongue, "why have you wounded your son?"

      "It is his baptism to the sword," her husband answered.

      Maddened, not by the pain in his shoulder, which indeed he scarcely felt, nor by the sight of his blood flicked contemptuously at his feet, but at the indignity of the wound, the boy rushed at his father, and hit at him blindly as with a stick; and when the master caught and held him, and by the act reminded him that he was yet a child, he began to sob violently with rage.

      "You shall pay," he flamed. "I will have your blood for mine. I will fight you again. I will kill you. I will – "

      "Peace, child," interrupted his mother. "He is your father."

      "Take him and see to him, Mary. I did but prick his shoulder," said the father. "So fiercely did he press upon me that I feared he might throw himself upon my point. The lesson shall teach him prudence."

      "I am dishonoured – wounded," moaned Richard.

      The father opened his doublet and displayed his chest, which upon both sides was marred by many a scar. Richard beheld, and blinked away his angry tears, as the passion departed from him.

      "Must I too be wounded before I am a soldier?" he said.

      "Ay, a hundred times," his father answered; and the boy turned away then with his former look of pride, and permitted his mother to wash and bandage the slight wound upon his shoulder.

      Soon they came out together to the knoll where the silent man sat with the north wind roaring into his ears the song of battle. He looked up when they were near, and called, "Richard!"

      The boy came, subdued and tired, and stood before his father.

      "Kneel."

      The boy obeyed. The lord of the isles fastened the velvet sword-belt to his son's waist, secured the coveted sword in its place, then stood, and drew out his own well-tested blade.

      With it he struck the boy smartly upon the shoulder exactly over the wound, smiling when the child compressed his lips fiercely but refused to wince, and loudly called:

      "Arise, Sir Richard!"

      CHAPTER IV

      MAKERS OF EMPIRE

      As the days passed, and Van Vuren's attitude of diffident friendliness remained unaltered, Roussilac's suspicions began to leave him; and even La Salle modified his former opinions when he again walked abroad and discovered that out of the seventy-five fighting men who made up the military complement of the Dutch man-of-war, no less than thirty had been sent out upon a hunting expedition in the western forests. These, and other circumstances, tended to impress the minds of the French officers that their ally was acting in good faith; thus the commandant relaxed his vigilance, and Van Vuren was permitted to go upon his way unwatched. The Dutchman came seldom to the fortress, because he feared a second meeting with La Salle; but he frequently stole under cover of night into the forest to the north, where the Cayugas had their camp, little guessing that these visits were known, not indeed to the French, but to a company of five Englishmen, who had been thrown upon the coast to the west of the settlement of Acadie during a storm of the previous October, and had wintered in a cave among the rugged cliffs some little distance beyond the falls of Montmorenci, believing themselves to be the sole representatives of their country in all that land.

      These men – the sole survivors of an expedition which had set forth with the object of establishing a small colony in the north – wasted no time in repining over their ill-fortune, or considering the hopeless nature of their position. They engaged themselves in mastering the topography of the fortress and ascertaining the strength of its garrison; they watched the river, and noted the coming and going of each ship; they made themselves friendly with the Iroquois, and from Shuswap, the chief of the Cayugas, a man who loved the English, they obtained from time to time much information of value. It was one of their number, Jeremiah Hough the Puritan, who had followed Van Vuren to the Indian camp-fire; and when he discovered that the Dutchman was indeed faithless to his allies and was endeavouring to stir up the Iroquois to strike a blow against the French position, he returned with the tidings to his comrades, and the little council of five sat for a long night and discussed this Dutch policy with the cool shrewdness of their race.

      As a result of their debate, one of the little band was deputed each night to lie concealed upon the shore and watch the Dutch ship. Simon Penfold, the leader, a spare, grey man of two score years and ten, but hard and hale as any oak in his home meadows, played spy on the first night; Jesse Woodfield, a yeoman scarce thirty years of age, did duty on the second, and handsome young Geoffrey Viner, the boy of the party, beloved by his comrades for the sake of his long fair hair and comely face, kept watch on the third. On the fourth night the task devolved upon George Flower, a middle-aged, sad-featured man, the captain's faithful friend since the days of boyhood; and the next night found stern Hough the Puritan lying among the willows above the shingle, with his cold eyes fixed upon a single star of light which marked the position of the Dutch ship.

      These five men, who made up the little company of Englishmen venturing into the French colony, were yeomen of Berks, farmers of the valleys and fields watered by the Thames, men of good repute, who had been driven to leave their native shore and seek another home in the wide new world through the oppression of the agents of the greedy English king.

      The man who had discovered Van Vuren's plans had indeed delayed his flight too long. Scarred and lined as were the faces of Flower and Penfold, their features had at least escaped the terrible mutilation which had been inflicted upon Hough as an outward and visible sign of the royal displeasure. His ears had been cropped close to the skull, his nostrils slit, his cheeks branded, as a penalty for having stoutly refused to supply any portion of the necessities of King Charles, according to the demand of the most honourable Court of Star Chamber. The strong black hair which spread thickly over the Puritan's face, yet without hiding the trail of the branding iron and the primings