a beastly French story," he added,
addressing Helm; "immoral enough to make a pirate blush. That's the
sort of girl Mademoiselle Roussillon is!"

"I don't care what kind of a book she reads," blurted Helm, "she's a
fine, pure, good girl. Everybody likes her. She's the good angel of
this miserable frog-hole of a town. You'd like her yourself, if you'd
straighten up and quit burning tow in your brain all the time. You're
always so furious about something that you never have a chance to be
just to yourself, or pleasant to anybody else."

Hamilton turned fiercely on Helm, but a glimpse of the Captain's broad
good-humored face heartily smiling, dispelled his anger. There was no
ground upon which to maintain a quarrel with a person so persistently
genial and so absurdly frank. And in fact Hamilton was not half so bad
as his choleric manifestations seemed to make him out. Besides, Helm
knew just how far to go, just when to stop.

"If I had got furious at you every time there was overwhelming
provocation for it," Hamilton said, "you'd have been long since hanged
or shot. I fancy that I have shown angelic forbearance. I've given you
somewhat more than a prisoner's freedom."

"So you have, so you have," assented Helm. "I've often been surprised
at your generous partiality in my case. Let's have some hot water with
something else in it, what do you say? I won't give you any more advice
for five minutes by your watch."

"But I want some advice at once."

"What about?"

"That girl."

"Turn her loose. That's easy and reputable."

"I'll have to, I presume; but she ought to be punished."

"If you'll think less about punishment, revenge and getting even with
everybody and everything, you'll soon begin to prosper."

Hamilton winced, but smiled as one quite sure of himself.

Jean followed the soldier to a rickety log pen on the farther side of
the stockade, where he found the prisoner restlessly moving about like
a bird in a rustic cage. It had no comforts, that gloomy little room.
There was no fireplace, the roof leaked, and the only furniture
consisted of a bench to sit on and a pile of skins for bed. Alice
looked charmingly forlorn peeping out of the wraps in which she was
bundled against the cold, her hair fluffed and rimpled in shining
disorder around her face.

The guard let Jean in and closed the door, himself staying outside.

Alice was as glad to see the poor lad as if they had been parted for a
year. She hugge