e power of
Lapierre, yet he found himself wholly at the mercy of Lapierre. For
somewhere behind that barrier of logs was the woman he loved. He
shuddered at the thought. He knew Lapierre. Knew that the man's white
blood and his education, instead of civilizing, had served to heighten
and to refine the barbaric cruelty and savagery of his heart. He knew
that Lapierre would stop at nothing to gain an end. His heart chilled
at the possibilities. He dreaded to act--yet he knew that he must act.

He dismissed the idea of a siege. A quick, fierce assault--an attack
that should have no lull, nor armistice until his Indians had scaled
the stockade, was preferable to the heart-breaking delay of a siege.
MacNair decided to launch his attack with so fierce an onslaught that
Lapierre would have no time to think of the girl. But if worse came to
worst, and he did think of her, what he would do he would be forced to
do quickly.

Grimly, MacNair led his warriors to the attack, and as the lean-faced
horde moved silently through the timbered aisles of the swamp, the
sound of scattering shots was borne to their ears as the scouts
exchanged bullets with Lapierre's sentries.

A cleared space, thirty yards in width, separated the forest from the
barricade, and with this clearing in sight, in the shelter of the
snow-laden spruces, MacNair called a halt, and in a brief address gave
his Indians their final instructions. In their own tongue he addressed
them, falling naturally into the oratorical swing of the council fire.

"The time has come, my people, as I have told you it must sometime
come, for the final reckoning with Lapierre. Not because the man has
sought my life, am I fighting him. I would not call upon you to risk
your lives to protect mine; not to avenge the burning of my storehouse,
nor yet, because he dug my gold. I am fighting him because he has
struck at your homes, and the homes of your wives and your children.
You are my people, and your interests are my interests.

"I have not preached to you, as do the good fathers at the Mission, of
a life in a world to come. Of that I know nothing. It is this
life--the daily life we are living now, with which I have to do. I
have taught you to work with your hands, because he who works is better
clothed, and better fed, and better housed than he who does not work.
I have commanded you not to drink the white man's fire-water, not
because it is wrong to be drunken. A ma