tain Gillam says there's a sailor-lad working on the docks here can
give evidence against M. Radisson."

"Can you guess who that sailor-lad is, Rebecca?"

"It is not--no--it is not Jack?" she asks.

"Jack it is, Rebecca. That reminds me, Jack sent a message to you!"

"A message to me?"

"Yes--you know he's married--he married last year when he was in the
north."

"Married?" cries Rebecca, throwing up her hands and like to faint from
surprise. "Married in the north? Why--who--who married him, Ramsay?"

"A woman, of course!"

"But--" Rebecca was blushing furiously, "but--I mean--was there a
chaplain? Had you a preacher? And--and was not Mistress Hortense the
only woman----?"

"No--child--there were thousands of women--native women----"

"Squaws!" exclaims the prim little Puritan maid, with a red spot
burning on each cheek. "Do you mean that Jack Battle has married a
squaw?" and she rose indignantly.

"No--I mean a woman! Now, Rebecca, will you sit down till I tell you
all about it?"

"Sir," interjects the young gentleman of the cloth, "I protest there
are things that a maid ought not to hear!"

"Then, sir, have a care that you say none of them under cloak of
religion! _Honi soit qui mal y pense_! The mind that thinketh no evil
taketh no evil."

Then I turned to Rebecca, standing with a startled look in her eyes.

"Rebecca, Madame Radisson has told you how Jack was left to be tortured
by the Indians?"

"Hortense has told me."

"And how he risked his life to save an Indian girl's life?"

"Yes," says Rebecca, with downcast lids.

"That Indian girl came and untied Jack's bonds the night of the
massacre. They escaped together. When he went snow-blind, Mizza
hunted and snared for him and kept him. Her people were all dead; she
could not go back to her tribe--if Jack had left her in the north, the
hostiles would have killed her. Jack brought her home with him----"

"He ought to have put her in a house of correction," snapped Rebecca.

"Rebecca! Why would he put her in a house of correction? What had she
done that she ought not to have done? She had saved his life. He had
saved hers, and he married her."

"There was no minister," said Rebecca, with a tightening of her
childish dimpled mouth and a reddening of her cheeks and a little
indignant toss of the chin.

"Rebecca! How could they get a minister a thousand leagues away from
any church? They will get one now----"

Rebecca ro