" he shouted, throwing aside the moose-skin coverlet. "Spy! Who?"

"It's Louis Laplante, of Quebec."

"Louis Laplante!" reiterated the trader. "A Frenchman employed by the
Hudson's Bay! Laplante, a trapper, with them! The scoundrel!" And he
ground out oaths that boded ill for Louis.

"Hold on!" I exclaimed, jerking him back. He was for dashing on Laplante
with a cudgel. "He's playing the trapper game with the lake tribes."

"I'll trapper him," vowed the trader. "How do you know he's a spy?"

"I don't _know_, really know," I began, clumsily conscious that I had no
proof for my suspicions, "but it strikes me we'd better not examine this
sort of suspect at too long range. If we're wrong, we can let him go."

"Bag him, eh?" queried the trader.

"That's it," I assented.

"He's a hard one to bag."

"But he's drunk."

"Drunk, Oh! Drunk is he?" laughed the man. "He'll be drunker," and the
trader began rummaging through bales of stuff with a noise of bottles
knocking together. He was humming in a low tone, like a grimalkin
purring after a full meal of mice--

"Rum for Indians, when they come,
Rum for the beggars, when they go,
That's the trick my grizzled lads
To catch the cash and snare the foe."

"What's your plan?" I asked with a vague feeling the trader had some
shady purpose in mind.

"Squeamish? Eh? You'll get over that, boy. I'll trap your trapper and
spy your spy, and Nor'-Wester your H. B. C.! You come down to the sand
between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I'll have news for
you," and he brushed past me with his arms full of something I could not
see in the half-light.

Then, as a trader, began my first compromise with conscience, and the
enmity which I thereby aroused afterwards punished me for that night's
work. I knew very well my comrade, with the rough-and-ready methods of
traders, had gone out to do what was not right; and I hung back in the
tent, balancing the end against the means, our deeds against Louis'
perfidy, and Nor'-Westers' interests against those of the Hudson's Bay.
It is not pleasant to recall what was done between the cedars and the
shore. I do not attempt to justify our conduct. Does the physician
justify medical experiments on the criminal, or the sacrificial priest
the driving of the scape-goat into the wilderness? Suffice it to say,
when I went down to the shore, Louis Laplante was sitting in the midst
of empty drinking-flasks, and the wily,