The two girls stood there bleakly.

“Madame Corbusier. What would you do without us?” Simone begged.

“I shall miss you,” the Madame promised tearfully. “But God has taken pity on me. He has supplied me with a woman, Marie Joseph Goyau, who will take your place. She is of the Muskrat French but is very good, I am told, with the iron and frying pan. With God’s help I shall survive.”

The two girls said nothing now. Words would have stuck in their throats. But that night in the privacy of their room they consulted together rebelliously and when the white-faced clock on the dining-room wall struck twelve, they crept downstairs. Simone bore two bundles of their belongings. Stone Girl carried Otter Boy, who was asleep. They could hear Madame Corbusier breathing heavily from the open door to her room. Simone unlatched the front door. The streets of the fort were empty and they moved swiftly without being accosted. Only when they reached the portal to the stockade did they find trouble. The heavy gates were closed.

“Open for us!” Simone called, pounding on the great movable posts.

A soldier of the Yengwe garrison leaned from the redoubt above.

“What are you two girls doing out at this time of night?” he wanted to know.

“We go on a mission. We have no time to lose,” Simone said.

“What kind of mission and who for?”

“It is a very secret mission.”

“I’ve no doubt,” the soldier said sarcastically. “But I can’t let you through till you tell me.”

“Call your officer, soldier!” Simone demanded.

“And get abused for waking him for two servant girls? Not me,” said the soldier. “Be off now. Come back by daylight and the gates will be open.”

The two girls turned back reluctantly but they did not give up. They tried other points in the stockade, finding the huge fence of posts too high to climb over. Finally a guard on the wall heard them in the darkness and fired his musket. In the end they went back defeated to the house, where the door remained unlocked.

“The air is that of a tomb and a prison,” Simone whispered. “I cannot breathe again till I am safe in the forest.”

“Sister. We will try tomorrow by daylight,” Stone Girl promised.

But the garrison soldier at the gate had recognized them in the lantern light and told about it. Père Le Clercq was summoned and closeted with Madame Corbusier. The next night a Plantscheman bateauman sat outside either door to the house. The fourth morning both girls, with Otter Boy, were taken aboard a prepared bateau which all too soon cast off from the dock and started down the river on its long journey. Madame Corbusier and Père Beaujeau waved from shore but only Père Le Clercq answered.

“Our life is finished now,” Simone said in their Indian tongue.

“We will never give up,” Stone Girl promised. “Once we are off this floating bastille and the jailers are gone, we will tie up Père Le Clercq with the cord from his black robe and take our freedom.”