A sentinel was
tramping to and fro at the gate, where a hazy lantern shone. The
night was breathless and silent. Hamilton approached the soldier
on duty and asked him if he had seen Captain Farnsworth, and
receiving a negative reply, turned about puzzled and thoughtful to
walk back and forth in the chill, foggy air.
Presently a faint yellow light attracted his attention. It shone
through a porthole in an upper room of the block-house at the
farther angle of the stockade. In fact, Alice was reading by a
sputtering lamp a book Farnsworth had sent her, a volume of
Ronsard that he had picked up in Canada. Hamilton made his way in
that direction, at first merely curious to know who was burning
oil so late; but after a few paces he recognized where the light
came from, and instantly suspected that Captain Farnsworth was
there. Indeed he felt sure of it. Somehow he could not regard
Alice as other than a saucy hoyden, incapable of womanly virtue.
His experience with the worst element of Canadian French life and
his peculiar cast of mind and character colored his impression of
her. He measured her by the women with whom the coureurs de bois
and half-breed trappers consorted in Detroit and at the posts
eastward to Quebec.
Alice, unable to sleep, had sought forgetfulness of her bitter
captivity in the old poet's charming lyrics.
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