here were wolves skulking through the
dark and Indians skipping among the rafters.

"Ghosts haven't hands," says Hortense, touching mine lightly; and the
touch brought the memory of those old mocking airs from the spinet.

Was it flood of memory or a sick man's dream? The presence seemed so
real that mustering all strength, I turned--turned to see Le Borgne, the
one-eyed, sitting on a log-end with a stolid, watchful, unreadable look
on his crafty face.

Bluish shafts of light struck athwart the dark. A fire burned against
the far wall. The smoke had the pungent bark smell of the flame that
used to burn in M. Picot's dispensary. This, then, had brought the
dreams of Hortense, now so far away. Skins hung everywhere; but in
places the earth showed through. Like a gleam of sunlight through dark
came the thought--this was a cave, the cave of the pirates whose voices I
had heard from the ground that night in the forest, one pleading to save
me, the other sending Le Borgne to trap me.

Leaning on my elbow, I looked from the Indian to a bearskin partition
hiding another apartment. Le Borgne had carried the stolen pelts of the
massacred tribe to the inland pirates. The pirates had sent him back for
me.

And Hortense was a dream. Ah, well, men in their senses might have done
worse than dream of a Hortense!

But the voice and the hand were real.

"Le Borgne," I ask, "was any one here?"

Le Borgne's cheeks corrugate in wrinkles of bronze that leer an evil
laugh, and he pretends not to understand.

"Le Borgne, was any one here with you?"

Le Borgne shifts his spread feet, mutters a guttural grunt, and puffs out
his torch; but the shafted flame reveals his shadow. I can still hear
him beside me in the dark.

"Le Borgne is the great white chief's friend," I say; "and the white-man
is the great white chief's friend. Where are we, Le Borgne?"

Le Borgne grunts out a low huff-huff of a laugh.

"Here; white-man is here," says Le Borgne; and he shuffles away to the
bearskin partition hiding another apartment.

Ah well as I said, one might do worse than dream of Hortense. But in
spite of all your philosophers say about there being no world but the
world we spin in our brains, I could not woo my lady back to it. Like
the wind that bloweth where it listeth was my love. Try as I might to
call up that pretty deceit of a Hortense about me in spirit, my perverse
lady came not to the call.

Then, thoughts would rac