know Piquet ees dead too?" Marcel's dark features
relaxed in a dry smile. It was not, then, solely the desire for
vengeance on the murderer of their kin that had prompted the half-breeds
to distort the facts.

"They say his extra clothes and his outfit were in the cabin, only his
rifle and fur missing. Now, Jean," he continued, "I am perfectly
satisfied with your story. I believe every word of it. I knew your
father and I know you. The Marcels are not liars. But the Lelacs are
going to make trouble over the evidence they found at your camp.
Suspicion always points to the survivor in a starvation camp, and you
know the circumstances are against you, my lad."

"M'sieu," Marcel protested. "Eef I keel Antoine, I would tak' heem into
de bush and hide heem, I would not worry ovair de fox and wolverine."

"Of course you would have hidden the body somewhere. We appreciate that.
But as they are trying to put this thing on you they ignore that side of
it. What you admit they found,--Antoine's body with a stab wound, and
Piquet's outfit, makes it look bad to people who don't know you as we
do. They won't believe that the famine got Piquet in the head. They'll
say that's a tale you made up to get yourself off."

Marcel went hot with anger. His impulse was to seek the Lelacs and have
it out, then and there. But he possessed the cool judgment of a long
line of ancestors whose lives had often depended on their heads, so he
choked back his rage.

"Now I don't want it carried down the coast that you killed your
partners, Jean," went on Gillies. "Young as you are, you'll never live
it down. And besides, there's no knowing what the government might do.
I'll have to make a report, you know. So we've got to do some tall
thinking between us before the hunters get in."

While the factor talked, the swift brain of Marcel had struck upon a
plan to trap and discredit the Lelacs, but he wished to think it over,
alone, before proposing it at the trade-house, so held his tongue. When
he was ready he would ask the factor to hold a hearing. Then he could
put some questions to his accusers that would make them squirm. One
question he did ask before packing his fur and outfit from the beach up
to the Mission.

"Have de Lelac traded dere fur, M'sieu?"

"No, we haven't started the trade yet."

"W'en dey trade dere fur weel you hold it from de oder fur, separate?"

"Why, yes, I'll do that for you, but you can't hope to identify skins,
Jean."