“As soon as we can. As soon as I’ve recovered my strength after the long sea journey.” She coughed delicately, to let me see how weak she was.

And then, as we had reached the door of the château again, I could only bid her a polite farewell and cross the river to the shipyard, speculating helplessly—why she should take no interest in military matters, when in London she had been so knowing about them: why she should have permitted Ellen Phipps to go to Three Rivers at such a time as this: above all whether Mademoiselle de Sabrevois would have been as guarded in her speech and as overcome by exhaustion if I had been Nathaniel.

XVI

SULLIVAN’S forces had moved north to redeem what Sullivan called the shameful blunders hitherto made by American troops in Canada. After they left, St. John’s became a sort of open-air madhouse. Half-clothed and leaderless soldiers, remnants of the regiments that had fled from before Quebec a month ago, appeared from nowhere and wandered from farm to farm, begging for food. Frantic supply-officers squabbled day and night over a pitiful mixture of supplies, each officer declaring that he and he alone must have the food, since the men of his regiment were most in need of it. The place was a porridge of rain, mosquitoes, mud, and rumors of smallpox, enough to make any man wonder whether anything worse could happen.

What it was that befell me, however, was the last thing I would have expected.

I had gone to Hersom, on the waterfront, to pick up the day’s news along with the meager rations I was allowed to draw for Tom and myself. News had suddenly become more important to us than ever, not only because we felt we had to learn something that might offset the horrible tales we heard of the smallpox—tales almost as sickening as the disease itself—but because all the new regiments we had seen arrive had been sent down the St. Lawrence by General Sullivan to capture Three Rivers, so to prevent British troops from passing that important post.