ted by the beady, glistening, insolent eyes of
Louis Laplante, gazing out of the dusk with an expression of rakish
amusement, the amusement of a spider when a fly walks into its web.
Taken unawares I have ever been more or less of what Mr. Jack MacKenzie
was wont to call "a stupid loon!" On discovering Laplante I promptly
sustained my reputation by letting the door fly to with a sharp click
that startled the whole room-full. Whereat Louis Laplante gave a low,
soft laugh.

"What do you want here, man?" demanded Governor McDonell's sharp voice.

Jerking off my cap, I saluted.

"My man, Your Honor," interjected Eric quietly. "Come here, Rufus," he
commanded, motioning me to his side with the hauteur of a master towards
a servant. And Louis Laplante rose and tip-toed after me with a tigerish
malice that recalled the surly squaw.

"Oh, Eric!" I cried out eagerly. "Are you hurt, and at such a time?"
Unconsciously I was playing into Louis' hands, for he stood by the
stove, laughing nonchalantly.

Thereupon Eric ground out some imprecation at my stupidity.

"There's been a shuffling of allegiance, I hear," he said with a queer
misleading look straight at Laplante. "We've recruits from Fort
Gibraltar."

Eric's words, curiously enough, banished triumph from Laplante's face
and the Frenchman's expression was one of puzzled suspicion. From Eric's
impassive features, he could read nothing. What Hamilton was driving at,
I should presently learn; but to find out I would no more take my eyes
from Laplante's than from a tiger about to spring. At once, to get my
attention, Hamilton brought a stick down on my toes with a sharpness
that made me leap. By all the codes of nudges and kicks and such
signaling, it is a principle that a blow at one end of human anatomy
drives through the density of the other extremity. It dawned on me that
Eric was trying to persuade Laplante I had deserted Nor'-Westers for the
Hudson's Bay. The ethics of his attempt I do not defend. It was after
the facile fashion of an intriguing era. A sharper weapon was presently
given us against Louis Laplante; for when I grasped Eric's stick to stay
the raps against my feet, I felt the handle rough with carving.

"What are these carvings, may I inquire, Sir?" I asked, assuming the
strangeness, which Eric's signals had directed, but never moving my eyes
from Laplante. The villain who had befooled me in the gorge and eluded
me in the forest, and now tormented France