He called softly, "Is that thou, Simon?"
"Ay, lad," came the answer.
Then laying down the pike, and seizing his own cross-bow, Rene slipped
quickly through the gate (which swung to behind him), and with
noiseless footsteps fled swiftly across the bridge that spanned the
moat, and disappeared in the black shadows of the forest beyond.
[Illustration: Rene slipped quickly through the gate.]
Although the moon had risen, and was now well up in the eastern sky, so
that the bridge was brightly illumined by it, Rene crossed unnoticed.
As the gate was still firmly fastened when he returned, Simon failed to
detect that it had been opened, but the old man spent some minutes
looking for the lad in the archway before he became convinced that he
was gone. Even then he considered that Rene was only endeavoring to
tease him by thus slipping away, and muttering something about a boy
being as full of mischief as a monkey, the soldier shouldered his pike
and once more resumed his measured pacings up and down the archway.
At the edge of the forest Rene stopped, drew from his bosom a note that
he had written before leaving his room, and thrust it into the end of a
cleft branch that he stuck into the ground near the end of the bridge.
It was addressed to his Excellency the Chevalier Laudonniere,
Commandant of Fort Caroline, and its contents were as follows:
"MY DEARLY BELOVED UNCLE,--Doubtless I am doing very wrong in thus
leaving the fort and undertaking an important mission without thy
sanction.
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