use it was
a day when frost was master of the sun, and men grew wild for action,
since to stand still was to face indignant Death, they, who camped
without, prepared to make a sally upon the wooden gates. Pierre saw
their intent, and hid in the ground some pemmican and all the scanty
rum. Then he looked at his powder and shot, and saw that there was
little left. If he spent it on the besiegers, how should they fare for
beast and fowl in hungry days? And for his rifle he had but a brace
of bullets. He rolled these in his hand, looking upon them with a grim
smile. And the Idiot, seeing, rose and sidled towards him, and said:
"Poor Grah want pipe--bubble--bubble." Then a light of childish cunning
came into his eyes, and he touched the bullets blunderingly, and
continued: "Plenty, plenty b'longs Grah--give poor Grah pipe--plenty,
plenty, give you these."

And Pretty Pierre after a moment replied: "So that's it, Grah?--you've
got bullets stowed away? Well, I must have them. It's a one-sided game
in which you get the tricks; but here's the pipe, Idiot--my only pipe
for your dribbling mouth--my last good comrade. Now show me the bullets.
Take me to them, daft one, quick."

A little later the Idiot sat inside the store, wrapped in loose furs,
and blowing bubbles; while Pretty Pierre, with many handfuls of bullets
by him, waited for the attack.

"Eh," he said, as he watched from a loophole, "Gyng and the others have
got safely past the Causeway, and the rest is possible. Well, it hurts
an idiot as much to die, perhaps, as a half-breed or a factor. It is
good to stay here. If we fight, and go out swift like Grah's bubbles, it
is the game. If we starve and sleep as did Grah's mother, then it also
is the game. It is great to have all the chances against and then to
win. We shall see."

With a sharp relish in his eye he watched the enemy coming slowly
forward. Yet he talked almost idly to himself: "I have a thought of so
long ago. A woman--she was a mother, and it was on the Madawaska River,
and she said: 'Sometimes I think a devil was your father, an angel
sometimes. You were begot in an hour between a fighting and a mass:
between blood and heaven. And when you were born you made no cry. They
said that was a sign of evil. You refused the breast, and drank only of
the milk of wild cattle. In baptism you flung your hand before your face
that the water might not touch, nor the priest's finger make a cross
upon the water. And they