then his bared forearm, in the flame
that licked and scorched the flesh. His face was perfectly unmoved, his
eyes unchanged in their expression of hatred. "Can he do this?" he asked.

"Perhaps not," said Haward lightly. "It is a very foolish thing to do."

The flame died out, and the trader tossed aside the charred bit of bark.
"There was old Pierre at Monacan-Town who taught me to pray to _le bon
Dieu_. He told me how grand and fine is a French gentleman, and that I was
the son of many such. He called the English great pigs, with brains as
dull and muddy as the river after many rains. My mother was the daughter
of a chief. She had strings of pearl for her neck, and copper for her
arms, and a robe of white doeskin, very soft and fine. When she was dead
and my father was dead, I came from Monacan-Town to your English school
over yonder. I can read and write. I am a white man and a Frenchman, not
an Indian. When I go to the villages in the woods, I am given a lodge
apart, and the men and women gather to hear a white man speak.... You have
done me wrong with that girl, that Ma'm'selle Audrey that I wish for wife.
We are enemies: that is as it should be. You shall not have her,--never,
never! But you despise me; how is that? That day upon the creek, that
night in your cursed house, you laughed"--

The Haward of the mountain pass, regarding the twitching face opposite him
and the hand clenched upon the handle of a knife, laughed again. At the
sound the trader's face ceased to twitch. Haward felt rather than saw the
stealthy tightening of the frame, the gathering of forces, the closer
grasp upon the knife, and flung out his arm. A hare scurried past, making
for the deeper woods. From the road came the tramp of a horse and a man's
voice, singing,--

"'To all you ladies now on land'"--

while an inquisitive dog turned aside from the road, and plunged into the
dell.

The rider, having checked his horse and quit his song in order to call to
his dog, looked through the thin veil of foliage and saw the two men
beneath the holly-tree. "Ha, Jean Hugon!" he cried. "Is that you? Where is
that packet of skins you were to deliver at my store? Come over here,
man!"

The trader moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and slipped the knife
back into its sheath. "Had we been a mile in the woods," he said, "you
would have laughed no more."

Haward watched him go. The argument with the rider was a lengthy one. He
upon horseback wo