Robert to sleep
well, and saying that he would come early in the morning with his
friend, Glandelet.

"His advice about sleeping was good, Robert," said Willet. "Now roll
into bed and off with you to slumberland at once."

Robert obeyed and his nerves were so steady and his mind so thoroughly
at peace that in fifteen minutes he slept. The hunter watched his steady
breathing with satisfaction and said to Tayoga:

"If our bibulous friend, Count Jean de Mezy, doesn't have a surprise in
the morning, then I'll go back to the woods, and stay there as long as I
live."

"Will Lennox kill him?" asked Tayoga.

"I hadn't thought much about it, Tayoga, but he won't kill him. Robert
isn't sanguinary. He doesn't want anybody's blood on his hands, and it
wouldn't help our mission to take a life in Quebec."

"The man de Mezy does not deserve to live."

Willet laughed.

"That's so, Tayoga," he said, "but it's no part of our business to go
around taking the lives away from all those who don't make good use of
'em. Why, if we undertook such a job we'd have to work hard for the next
thousand years. I think we'd better fall on, ourselves, and snatch about
eight good hours of slumber."

In a few minutes three instead of one slept, and when the first ray of
sunlight entered the room in the morning Tayoga awoke. He opened the
window, letting the fresh air pour in, and he raised his nostrils to it
like a hound that has caught the scent. It brought to him the aromatic
odors of his beloved wilderness, and, for a time, he was back in the
great land of the Hodenosaunee among the blue lakes and the silver
streams. He had been educated in the white man's schools, and his
friendship for Robert and Willet was strong and enduring, but his heart
was in the forest. Enlightened and humane, he had nevertheless asked
seriously the night before the question: "Will Lennox kill him?" He had
discovered something fetid in Quebec and to him de Mezy was a noxious
animal that should be destroyed. He wished, for an instant, that he knew
the sword and that he was going to stand in Lennox's place.

Then he woke Robert and Willet, and they dressed quickly, but by the
time they had finished Monsieur Berryer knocked on the door and told
them breakfast was ready. The innkeeper's manner was flurried. He was
one of the _honnetes gens_ who liked peace and an upright life. He too
wished the insolent pride of de Mezy to be humbled, but he had scarcely
come to the