t even this Indian would look at me with disdain, but she did not.
She thought a moment, then wagged her head in assent.

"But I promised Father Carheil not to drink any brandy myself," she
added defiantly, as if she feared I might protest, and I felt myself as
low as the hound that I had kicked that day because it would have
stolen a child's sagamite.

"Make haste!" I cried, in a fury with myself, and with the speeding
time. "Tell the prisoner to saunter away from the door, to pass the
largest fire, and then to go straight through the old maize field
toward the timber. I will be waiting there."

"I can do it," she vaunted, and she gathered the brandy under her
blanket, and ran like a quail, while I went to my red-topped giant.

"Pierre Boudin," I cried, with my hand on his collar, "if we get back
to this place alive, you are to marry that Ottawa girl; to marry her
fairly with priest and book. Remember that."

My man turned a complacent eye. "If the master wishes," he said
dutifully. Then he gave a fat chuckle. "I promised to marry her when
we came back if she would save the Englishman,--but then I thought that
we should go home the other way."

Why try to teach decency to a barnyard brood! I dusted my fingers free
from the soil of him. "I will marry her to you, if only to see her
flout you," I promised vengefully. "Now to the canoes, and have your
paddles ready." I had no smile for him, though he sought it, as I
walked away.

The moon had swung free of the horizon, and cabins and trees stood out
as if made of white cardboard. The night was chilly, and as I crept
along the edge of the maize field, I caught my numbed toes on the
stiffened clods of earth turned up by last year's plowing. Yet I moved
silently, and by keeping in the shadow of blackened stumps and withered
maize stalks, I reached bow-shot of the commandant's door.

Truly one part of my plan had succeeded. The house was the centre of
an ant-like swarm skurrying here and there, apparently without method,
but with a jerkiness of movement that suggested attack and recoil. I
could distinguish the nose pendants of the Ottawas and the bristling
crests of the Hurons. It was a crew with choice potentialities for
mischief. Cadillac was justified in feeling that his scalp sat but
unsteadily upon his head.

I had given Singing Arrow fifteen minutes to hide her brandy and send
word to the braves, and I counted off the time to myself, trying to