mber. I should have sought all means to bring about his
ruin, had he not taken the labor from my hands. But a bastard!"
Brother Jacques shuddered. "Bah! What could I do? I could become
only a spectator. My word for it, it has been a fine comedy, this
bonhomie of mine, this hail-fellow well met. And only to-night he saw
the pit at his feet. If that fool of a corporal had not been drunk."

"Wretch!" cried the priest, trembling as if seized with convulsion.
Duped!

The vicomte opened the door, and bowed with his hand upon his heart.

"Till the morning prayers, Father," with mock gravity; "till the
morning prayers."

CHAPTER XXXI

THE EPIC OF THE HUNTING HUT

So the amiable dog became a lion, bold, impudent, mocking; the mask was
gone forever, both from his face and his desires. He wore his empty
scabbard with all the effrontery of a man who had fought and won his
first duel. Du Puys had threatened to hang the man who gave the
vicomte a sword. As the majority of the colonists were ignorant of
what lay behind this remarkable quarrel, they naturally took sides with
the man whose laugh was more frequent than his frown. Thus, the
vicomte still shuffled the ebon dominoes of a night and sang out
jovially, "Doubles!" Whenever the man he had so basely wronged passed
him, he spat contemptuously and cried: "See, Messieurs, what it is to
be without a sword!" And as for Brother Jacques, it was: "And how is
Monsieur Jacques's health this fine morning?" or "What a handsome rogue
of a priest you are!" or "Can you tell me where I may find a sword?" He
laughed at D'Herouville, and bantered the poet on his silence,--the
poet whose finer sense and intuition had distrusted the vicomte from
the first.

One day madame came out to feed the mission's chickens. Her hand swung
to and fro, and like a stream of yellow gold the shelled corn trailed
through the air to the ground. The fowls clustered around her noisily.
She was unaware of the vicomte, who leaned against the posts of the
palisade.

There was in his glance which said: "Madame, I offered to make you my
wife; now I shall make you something less." And seeing the Chevalier
stirring inside the fort, he mused: "My faith, but that old marquis
must have had an eye. The fellow's mother must have been a handsome
wench."

Once the vicomte came secretly upon D'Herouville, Fremin, Pauquet, and
the woodsman named The Fox because of his fiery hair and beard, peaked
fa