explosively. "Make it a point to knock the head off anything that stands
in your way, Sir----"

"But you don't suppose," I expostulated, about to voice my own
suspicions.

"_Suppose!_" he roared out. "I make it a point never to _suppose_
anything. I act on facts, Sir! You wanted to go into that wigwam; didn't
you? Well then, why the deuce didn't you go, and knock the head off
anything that opposed you?"

Being highly successful in all his own dealings, Mr. Jack MacKenzie
could not tolerate failure in other people. A month of vigilant
searching had yielded not the slightest inkling of Miriam and the child;
and this fact ignited all the gunpowder of my uncle's fiery
temperament. We had felt so sure Le Grand Diable's band of vagabonds
would hang about till the brigades of the North-West Company's tripmen
set out for the north, all our efforts were spent in a vain search for
some trace of the rascals in the vicinity of Quebec. His gypsy
nondescripts would hardly dare to keep the things taken from Miriam and
the child. These would be traded to other tribes; so day and night, Mr.
MacKenzie, Eric and I, with hired spies, dogged the footsteps of
trappers, who were awaiting the breaking up of the ice; shadowed
_voyageurs_, who passed idle days in the dram-shops of Lower Town, and
scrutinized every native who crossed our path, ever on the alert for a
glimpse of Diable, or his associates. Diligently we tracked all Indian
trails through Charlesbourg forest and examined every wigwam within a
week's march of the city. Le Grand Diable was not likely to be among his
ancestral enemies at Lorette, but his half-breed followers might have
traded with the Hurons; and the lodges at Lorette were also searched.
Watches were set along the St. Lawrence, so no one could approach an
opening before the ice broke up, or launch a canoe after the water had
cleared, without our knowledge. But Le Grand Diable and his band had
vanished as mysteriously as Miriam. It was as impossible to learn where
the Iroquois had gone as to follow the wind. His disappearance was
altogether as unaccountable as the lost woman's, and this, of itself,
confirmed our suspicions. Had he sold, or slain his captives, he would
not have remained in hiding; and the very fruitlessness of the search
redoubled our zeal.

The conviction that Louis Laplante had, somehow or other, played me
false, stuck in my mind like the depression of a bad dream. Again and
again, I related the