ced,
middle-aged man with blear eyes. "We're looking for the Nor'-Westers'
express," and he laughed insolently.

"You don't expect to find our brigades in Fort Gibraltar's cellar," said
I, backing away from them and piecing this latest information to what I
had already heard of plots and conspiracies.

Forthwith I felt strong hands gripping both my arms like a vise and the
coils of a rope were about me with the swiftness of a lasso. My first
impulse was to struggle against the outrage; but I was beginning to
learn the service of open ears and a closed mouth was often more
valuable than a fighter's blows. Already I had ascertained from their
own lips that the Hudson's Bay intended to molest our north-bound
brigade.

"Well," said I, with a laugh, which surprised the rascals mightily, "now
you've captured your elephant, what do you propose to do with him?"

Without answering, the men shambled down to the landing place of the
fort, jostling me along between the red-faced man and Louis Laplante.

"I consider this a scurvy trick, Louis," said I. "You've let me into a
pretty scrape with your idiotic heroics about paying back a fancied
grudge. To save a mouse from the tigers, Louis, and then feed him to
your cats! Fie, man! I like your son-of-a-seigneur ideas of honor!"

"Ingrate! Low-born ingrate," snapped the Frenchman, preparing to strike
one of his dramatic attitudes, "if I were not the son of a seigneur, and
you a man with bound arms, you should swallow those words," and he
squared up to me for a second time. "If you won't fight, you shan't run
away----"

"Off with your French brag," ordered the soberest of the Hudson's Bay
men, catching Louis by the scruff of his coat and spinning him out of
the way. "There'll be neither fighting nor running away. It is to Fort
Douglas we'll take our fine spy."

The words stung, but I muffled my indignation.

"I'll go with pleasure," I returned, thinking that Frances Sutherland
and Hamilton and Father Holland were good enough company to compensate
for any captivity. "With pleasure, and 'tis not the first time I'll have
found friends in the Hudson's Bay fort."

At that speech, the red-faced man, who seemed to be the ringleader, eyed
me narrowly. We all embarked on a rickety raft, that would, I declare,
have drowned any six sober men who risked their lives on it; but drunk
men and children seem to do what sober, grown folk may not are.

How Louis Laplante was for fighting a due