They escaped from the first swamp only to stumble into a second. When dawn came, they were still far from Three Rivers; and at Three Rivers, rushed there the night before from Quebec, were not only the whole British fleet, but freshly arrived transports carrying an army that was trooping ashore, boatload after boatload, even as the Americans marched up to the assault.

Sullivan’s troops attacked, only to be overwhelmed by numbers; and when they broke and ran for their boats, the boats were gone. They took to the swamps, foodless and exhausted. General Thompson and Colonel Irvine were captured by the British; and when the remnants of those once-proud regiments at last straggled into Sorel, they were as destitute, ragged and dejected as the sorriest specimens in all that sorry camp.

… At the first report of the disaster, I had gone to the Château de St. Auge to urge Marie de Sabrevois to set out for Albany as soon as Ellen Phipps should return from Three Rivers. This time I was admitted without question; and when Marie de Sabrevois entered the bare room in which I waited, Ellen Phipps was with her.

I knew from the thumping beneath my smock that Ellen had been more in my mind than I had realized, and that I had feared she might come to some harm on her journey to Three Rivers. I would even have liked to say something of the sort to her, but since she hardly looked at me when she came in, and since her aunt was there, I said nothing.

Marie de Sabrevois had no sooner set eyes on me than she asked, “Where’s your brother?” and there was a haughty look about her, as if she were provoked.

“I don’t rightly know,” I said. “He takes his orders from General Arnold. He might be in Montreal, and then again he might not.”

“Haven’t you seen him recently?”

She and Nathaniel, I realized, must have met when she was journeying from Quebec to St. John’s. She must have expected to see him again on the day when Cap and I had sent him back to Montreal. When I hesitated in replying, she dropped the subject like a hot coal and turned to another. She was a smart woman: the smartest I ever knew.

“You had a message for Ellen’s brother, didn’t you?” she asked. “You can tell her now, and she’ll see he gets it.”

“Yes,” I said, “we had word that Congress had resolved to raise three thousand Indians for service in Canada, and I thought Ellen’s brother might like to know about it.”

“Oh, indeed!” she said. “Three thousand Indians! Three thou—–Who told you Ellen had a brother?”

“Why, Ellen told me,” I said. I looked at Ellen; but she was busy creasing a fold in her coarse gray dress.

Marie de Sabrevois laughed. It was a pleasant laugh.