will convert many delightful horses into unmanageable brutes!

A good seat is, of course, a prerequisite of good hands, and a good seat can never be acquired without mastering balance. If we have confidence in ourselves and in the horse don't imagine him a raging lion ready to devour us-it doesn't require an extraordinary amount of practice to become reasonably proficient in balancing ourselves on a horse. It takes much longer to acquire equestrian tact and a knowledge of equine psychol

ogy.

Some writers and scientists assert that a horse can reason. They claim that he can be educated to do sums in arithmetic, even to extract the cube root of large numbers. Some of my readers are doubtless struggling with this problem and will hope that it isn't as difficult for the horse as for them. Where instinct ends and reason begins in the horse is difficult for us lay-people to determine. For instance, our Cavalry School once owned a good jumping horse named Quandary. He had a very short tail-a victim of the abominable custom of docking. With no "brush" to 'shoo" flies, they worried him exceedingly. When the "fly-sheet" was left off, he would seize a mouthful of hay, carefully place it on his back, and then, with his "fly-shaking" muscles, he would shake off the hay and thus obtain a short relief from his tormentors. Was that instinct or reason? Some may claim that Quandary reasoned out his plan of attack on the flies; but we can't make use of his reason, if he has any, in managing him. Our plans must be based upon the horse's instinct of self-preservation and his remarkable memory. He retains impressions for a long, long time, and it sometimes seems to us that it's only our mistakes which he remembers that he quickly forgets the good turns we do him. This may be because, being a gentleman, he expects to be treated as one; and consequently when he isn't he's a long time forgetting. We must be very careful in our association with the horse, and never forget our "manners." We can't apologize or make amends to him. We may step upon the toe of our dancing partner, run over a man, or precede a lady in our rush for a train seat. If we say "I'm sorry," we frequently are told, at least, that we are forgiven,

that the incident is forgotten. Not so with a horse. We can't pat him on the neck, pet him, and expect him to forget. He probably has us on a pedestal too high, for he certainly considers all of our actions intentional. Thus, if in jumping, we, through accident or lack of skill, bump him on the mouth or on the loins, he takes the insult as intentional. What are his reactions? What is the result of our gaucherie? When we come to the next obstacle, he remembers the pain incurred at the last. He is likely wisely to decline to jump at all-he "stops" or "refuses." It really isn't the jump-it's the expected bump that he refuses. Or if he be too gallant to "refuse," it's quite probable that upon landing he will bolt, trying by the only means he knows to escape the expected pain. His memory and sense of self-preservation have led him to adopt these courses. Similarly, if in mounting a horse that is standing quite quietly, we rake him with our spur, we must not be surprised if he doesn't thereafter stand quietly for mounting. We may pet him, feed him sugar and offer all kinds of apologies, but it's difficult to erase from his mind the fact that he was once hurt while being mounted. He has gotten the idea that in the future he must take care of himself in such circumstances. Some unhappy experiences he never forgets. It makes no difference whether our action is intentional or purely accidental. He can't differentiate between an accidental bump on the mouth in

Lundean

jumping and a deliberate jerk. The best riders never punish a horse unintentionally. When they inflict pain it's for a concrete purpose. They punish a horse when he needs it; but they are equally sure to reward him by patting, freeing his head, and so forth, when he deserves it.

All riders like "light-mouthed" horses and dislike "pullers"-horses that won't go on an easy, light rein. A confirmed "puller" is very disagreeable and the vice is a difficult one to overcome. There is much truth in the old saying that "he won't pull you if you don't pull him." Most horses that really pull do so from one or a combination of the following causes: first, hard hands, unsteady seat, and legs of the rider; second, unsoundness of horse; third, undue excitement of horse or rider (latter is largely responsible). The most frequent cause is the first one. One rarely sees a rider with good hands and secure seat annoyed by a pulling horse.

The main defenses of a horse against pain inflicted by the rider are rearing and running. If we "hang on" by the reins we may produce either a rearer or a puller. For example, a horse, from fear or excess of spirits, shies; the insecure rider loses his balance and, to keep from falling, pulls on the reins; this hurts the horse's mouth and, to escape the pain, he arches his neck and gives his jaw; but hands, hard and insensitive to the yielding of the horse, still cling to the reins with the same or increasing

pressure. The horse is confused; innocently he shied, but he has been hit on the mouth; he has yielded, but has got no relief; at his wits' end he bolts or attempts to; the rider, never yielding, pulls the harder; the struggle is on. Sometimes bolting is prevented, but both rider and horse are glad when the ride is over. A few such experiences and we have a puller on our hands.

What would a good rider, with steady legs, secure seat, and light hands have done

in the circumstances? He would have "gone" with the horse. His good balance and close legs would have held him on; he would not have used the reins to maintain his seat; there would have been no hit on the mouth. Had it been necessary to use the reins for purpose of control, he would (Continued on page 664)

Chivalry-I call her that, for she deserved knighthood, though the accolade never fell upon her young shoulder, and she blossomed on the edge of the wilderness. Would you go in quest of her to-daythis girl of two hundred years ago? Then you must roam far afield. It is worth a journey to find her-Captain Madeleine of Verchères, immortalized in bronze, waiting to welcome you!

Come first to Montreal. Then cross the bridge over the St. Lawrence to the southerly side. Follow the Great River downstream, in sight of the twin mountains, Beloeil and Mont Bruno; and as you pass through those tranquil French Canadian townlets, St. Lambert, Longueuil, Boucherville, Varennes-try to picture them as they must have looked in the days of the first settlers, when every village began life inside the protecting walls of a palisade, and Indian canoes shot up and down the river, and the fierce Iroquois lurked ready to pounce and capture, to ravage and burn and slay.

At last you come to Verchères; and in a field near the water's edge, you find her-Captain Madeleine, guarding her home. A modest little village, Verchères-but the statue of its famous daughter is of heroic size. The tall stone pedestal represents the battlemented bastion of a fort, and mounted upon it is the Jeanne d'Arc of New France. How old is she? Fourteen and a half. Her hair hangs down her back in two long braids, but that gallant, beautiful young head is topped by a soldier hat. Her uniform? Girlish blouse and skirt and apron; but she grips in both hands the gun she has lowered from her shoulder. It is long and

backward, balancing herself against its weight. Her feet are firmly planted. Let the foe come! She will no more yield an inch than the bastion on which she stands. Her face is turned toward Montreal, from whence for eight terrible days she waited for deliverance. Now for her story.

It was the 22nd of October, 1692, and it was eight o'clock in the morning. Marie Madeleine (or MarieMagdelaine, as she writes her name, in the old French style), daughter of François Jarret, Sieur de Verchères, was standing or strolling by the riverside. Was she wondering when she would see again her soldier father, now on duty in Quebec? Or how soon she would welcome back her mother, whom some necessity had called away to Montreal-Ville-Marie, if you would have its older name?

About four hundred paces behind her stood the stronghold of Verchères

a fortress, not of stone but of wood: just a palisade with a bastion at each corner to defend it, and inside the big rectangular inclosure her father's manor-house, peasant cottages, storehouses, a chapel, no doubt, and the arsenal. Up there were the two brothers left under her care-twelve years old and ten-Pierre and Alexandre. Where were the still younger children of that big family? Gone, perhaps, with their mother to VilleMarie?

Rudely the sound of firing broke the morning stillness. What did those gunshots mean? Half a dozen soldiers formed the garrison of Verchères; but four of these had gone a-hunting, confident that so late in the season no more ravaging Mohawks would come stealing up the Richelieu River, to trouble the settlements along the St. Lawrence shore. Foolish trustfulness! Madeleine looked and soon enough she under

back! Screened by the bushes, the enemy had drawn near, and now they were firing upon the farmers toiling in their fields! A cry of warning reached the girl's ears. A servant from the fort was calling to her:

"Save yourself, Mademoiselle! Save yourself! The Iroquois! The Iroquois!"

Turning, she saw her own peril. A band of savages rushing toward her forty-five of them, she tells us, and "not more than a pistol-shot away!" Her only hope lay in headlong flight. Fear shod her feet with lightning! And as she darted toward the fort, from the depths of her heart rose a prayer to be saved from what she dreaded a thousand times more than death-captivity! Suddenly a terrific fusilade! Bullets from forty-five guns whistling about her ears! Finding her too fleet for them, the Indians had paused to fire upon her. Was it, as she believed, to kill her outright, or only to force instant surrender? If to kill then there is but one word for her escapea miracle! But, oh, how far away the gate of her home seemed to her now! How long it took to reach it, under that whistling hail of lead! How tired she was growing!

"To arms! To arms!" she shouted. Would no one come out to rescue her? But the two soldiers left to guard the fort were very far from giving her aid.

Close to the gate at last! But almost on the threshold of her refuge, Madeleine felt herself seized. One Indian had kept up the chase-and now he clutched her by her neckerchief! chief! Wrenching herself free, she left it in his hands, and, escaped from his grip, she won the entrance. But look! In her very pathway, two frenzied women, bewailing the husbands they were sure had been killed! Driving them in to safety, she sprang

inside the palisade, and with her own hands closed the gates against the enemy.

"To arms!" For now this girl and her young brothers must fight like men to defend their home. They must save the women and children of Verchères, trembling within these sheltering walls, while out in the fields their husbands and fathers were dying or falling into captivity. Captain Madeleine knew her duty. No doubt she had been by her mother's side when that heroic lady had fought off the Iroquois two years earlier. La Bonté and Gachet, the two remaining soldiers, were nowhere to be seen; but rallying what few persons she could to help her, she made the rounds of the fort. Several posts of the palisade had fallen, leaving breaches open to the enemy. Order

ing these set upright, she herself seized a post by the end, to raise itheavy task for fourteen years! Encouraging her aids, "I proved," she says, in her story of the siege, "that when God gives strength, nothing is impossible."

Next she made her way to the redoubt, as they called the solid building where were stored the munitions of war. This was not an outside blockhouse, as some have assumed, connected with the fort by a covered way-which the Indians could at once have burned. We must think of this arsenal as standing within the palisade. A blockhouse set inside such a stockade becomes a redoubt, and this one offered a strong refuge to which a hard-pressed garrison could retreat. Here Madeleine found her two craven soldiersone hiding, the other holding a lighted slow-match!

"What," she sternly demanded, "do you mean to do with that fuse?" "It is to touch off the powder," stammered the culprit, "and to blow us up."

Beside himself with the fear of torture at the hands of the savages, this poltroon was ready to wreck the fort, bring death upon all within it, rather than fight!

has so often taught you-that gentlemen are born only to pour out their blood in the service of God and the King."

A big canoe was sighted on the river, heading for the landing-place. Pierre Fontaine of Varennes, with his wife Marguerite and her two Twelve years old and ten, these children! What madness brought boys, but ready as their sister to them here at this fatal hour? Madefight to the death! And to the death leine appealed to La Bonté and it would have to be, unless here Gachet. Would they go the lay their one chance they could rescue? Their silence proved their make the enemy believe that the fort lack of courage. Very well, then, held a strong garrison of fighting their captain would go herselfmen. Conjure up the scene-Cap- alone! Laviolette, her servant, she tain Madeleine, her brothers, and commanded to stand sentinel at the the two soldiers shamed into man- gate, holding it open against her hood at last, rushing along the roof return. Should she be killed, and of the covered way that must have those she sought to save, then-her

"THUNDERED THE CANNON: BUT STILL NO HELP FOR BRAVE VERCHÈRES"

connected the angles of the fort, firing through the loopholed palisade, mounting the bastions! Hear the crack of their musketry, the patter of hostile bullets against the walls in answer! Madeleine herself loaded

Few words, but, oh to have seen the flash in the girl's eyes! in the girl's eyes! "I spoke to him," she says, "in a tone so firm and so assured that he obeyed me."

Now to arm herself and her brothers! Tossing aside her demure cap, she clapped a soldier hat on her head. Seizing a gun, she turned to Pierre and Alexandre.

"Brothers, let us fight to the death! We fight for our country and our religion. Think of what your father

only inspired the Iroquois with wholesome respect for the fighting powers of Verchères, but warned the neighboring forts to be on their guard against attack.

Above the din of battle, rose the wails of the mothers and their little ones. They must be made to stop, or their cries would betray to the besiegers that the place was filled merely with women and children. While she was forcing them to be quiet, a new problem confronted this valiant young commander.

orders were to close it again and continue bravely to defend the fort. Under the very eyes of the Iroquois, down to the shore she passed-gun in hand and soldier hat on head! "I went," she tells us, "in the thought that God had inspired me--that the enemy believed it was a feint that I was making, to entice them to come up to the fort, where a lively sortie would be made upon them. They really did believe it."

So, while the red men held back, supposing a strong garrison to be using her for a decoy to lure them to their defeat, Madeleine accomplished her gallant rescue. When the imperiled four had disembarked, she made them walk ahead of her up to the fort, in full view of the Indians, she herself acting as rear guard

this proud scorn of danger "making the enemy believe," she says, "that there was more for them to fear than for us." And thus she saved Pierre Fontaine and his family, finding in him at least a staunch recruit.

Yet once again this amazing girl sallied forth! She remembered three bags of linen, and some bed-coverings,

sun.

left outside the fort to bleach in the Such things were precious beyond price to colonists cut off from their mother country. To lose clean clothes and coverlets would have been a tragedy indeed! Madeleine gave La Bonté and Gachet one more chance. Would somebody like to go with her to rescue her linen? Their gloomy faces were answer enough. But her brothers were ready.

"Take your guns," she said to Pierre and Alexandre, "and come with me. As for you"-to the others "keep up your fire upon the enemy, while I go fetch my linen."

Fetch it she did, making two trips, while the red besiegers looked on; and, fooled by an audacity greater than their own, not one of them drew trigger upon "the dauntless three"! Hear her own words.

"I proved that when God takes charge of things, one cannot fail to succeed."

But what havoc Indian fury wrought, that day of "the great battle," as Madeleine calls it! Flames devoured as many of the peasant dwellings as lay outside the palisade. The tiny garrison kept

firing on the foe; but the sun set amid storm-clouds; night fell-and what a night! A furious tempestsnow and hail together-swept the countryside; but it could not sweep away the savage horde waiting for the cloak of darkness to attempt to climb over the walls!

Captain Madeleine assembled her troops-six persons, two of them boys and one an old man of eighty! "God has saved us to-day from the hands of our enemies. But we must take care not to fall to-night into their snares. As for me, I wish to make you see that I have no fear." She took upon herself the defense of the bastions and the palisadesaided by her brothers and the man of eighty-"a soldier," she called him, "who has never fired a shot." "And you, Pierre Fontaine, La Bonté, and

Gachet, you will go to the redoubt, with the women and children, for that is the strongest place. If I am captured, never surrender, even if I should be burned or hacked in pieces before your eyes. You need not fear anything in that redoubt, provided you fight."

"Instantly," she tells us, "I placed my two young brothers on two bastions, that young man of eighty on the third, and I took the fourth." (Be sure she chose the most exposed one for herself.) Manfully the sentinels played their parts, despite the terrible northeaster. Through snow and hail was heard, each moment, from redoubt to bastions, from bastions to redoubt, "Bon quart!" ("All's well!")

But for the Iroquois all was not well. The ceaseless watch foiled their plot to take the fort that night. So redskin prisoners later confessed. Besides, they had lost some of their warriors by the defenders' bullets. O valiant Three Musketeers-Madeleine, Pierre, Alexandre!

After midnight, however, came an alarm. "Mademoiselle, I hear something!" called the sentinel on the bastion of the gate.

Hastening toward him, Madeleine glimpsed, outlined against the snow, "beasts with horns"! The only cows escaped from the red butchers had come home. She was urged to let them in.

"God forbid! You don't know yet all the tricks of the savages! No doubt they're walking up after these cows, covered with the skins of cattle, to enter the fort, if we're unwary enough to open the gate. I fear any enemy as cunning and sly as the Iroquois."

In the end, she did admit them, her brothers standing with their guns aimed, ready to fire, in case it was a ruse. No Indians followed.

Morning dawned. After her allnight vigil, Captain Madeleine greeted her troops with a cheery face.

"Since with the aid of Heaven we have passed safely through this night, frightful though it has been, we can pass through others, safely, keeping up our good watch and having the cannon fired from hour to hour, to gain help from Montreal, which is only eight leagues away."

These words heartened everybody except poor Marguerite Fontaine, who, brought up in Paris, was extremely timid, says our hardy colonial girl. Afraid that slavery or roasting alive would be her fate if she remained in Verchères, she begged her husband to take her away to a stronger fort! With a twinkle in his eye (we must suppose) he offered to