t of it, the shots, the shouts, the flashes, and
remembered only his own part. He judged that in another minute the man
would show himself. So believing, he laid his rifle across his stump,
cocked it, and was ready to take aim and fire in a few seconds.

His foe's head appeared, after just about the delay that he had
expected, and Robert's hand sprang to the trigger at the very moment
the man pulled his own. The bullet hummed by his cheek. His finger
contracted and then it loosened. A sudden acuteness of vision, or a
chance thinning of the fog at that point, enabled him to see the man's
face, and he recognized the French partisan, Charles Langlade, known
also to the Indians as the Owl, who, with his wife, the Dove, had once
held him in a captivity by no means unkind.

His humane instincts, his gratitude, his feeling for another flared
up even in that moment of battle and passion, when the man-hunting
impulse was so strong. His aim, quick as it was, had been sure and
deadly, but, deflecting the muzzle of the rifle a shade, his finger
contracted again. The spurt of fire leaped forth and the bullet sang
by the ear of Langlade, singing to him a little song of caution as it
passed, telling such a wary partisan as he that his stump was a very
exposed stump, dangerous to the last degree, and that it would be
better for him to find one somewhere else.

Robert did not see the Owl go away, but he was quite sure that he had
gone, because it was just the sort of thing that such a skilled forest
fighter would do. The fog thickened again, and, in a few more minutes,
both lines shifted somewhat. Then he had to watch new stumps at new
points, and his thoughts were once more in tune with those about him,
concentrated on the battle and the man-hunt.

A bullet tipped his ear, and he saw that it came from a stump hardly
visible in the fog. The sharpshooter was not likely to be Langlade
again, and, at once, it became Robert's ambition to put him out of
action. No consideration of mercy or humanity would restrain him now,
if he obtained a chance of a good shot, and he waited patiently for
it. Evidently this new sharpshooter had detected his presence also,
and the second duel was on.

The man fired again in a minute or two, and the bullet chipped very
close. He was so quick, too, that Robert did not get an opportunity to
return his fire, but he recognized the face and to his great surprise
saw that it was De Courcelles who had taken a pl