pil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once trudged
from Fair View store to Williamsburgh.

"I was lying in the woods over there," said Hugon sullenly. "I heard them
coming, and I took my leave. 'Peste!' said I. 'The old, weak man who
preaches quietness under men's injuries, and the young wolf pack, all
brown, with Indian names!' They may have the woods; for me, I go back to
the town where I belong."

He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group.
MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunny
day in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in wind and
rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his great
wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanish
leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair, out of
coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce,
vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.

"There is Meshawa," he said,--"Meshawa, who was a little boy when I went
to school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu! one day
I found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in the room. Next
time I talked he did not laugh! They are all"--he swept his hand toward
the circle beneath the elm--"they are all Saponies, Nottoways, Meherrins;
their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe, and humble to the English. A
Monacan is a great brave; he laughs at the Nottoways, and says that there
are no men in the villages of the Meherrins."

"When do you go again to trade with your people?" asked MacLean.

Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. "They are not
my people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any more. I
am so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay at
Williamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and drink of
the best?"

"There is none will prevent you," said MacLean coolly. "Dwell in town,
take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all the
deer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrows
athwart the threshold of a gentleman's door."

Hugon's lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. "So he found the arrow?
Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!"

"If I were Haward," said MacLean, "I would have you taken up."

The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his shoulders
and waved his hand. "Oh, he--he despises me