nts until the New World is reached. I give
you my word."

De Roberval's rage had so completely mastered him that speech seemed to
have almost deserted him. His words came thickly.

"Go, sir," he said at last, pointing to the door, "and take heed how you
break your promise. If you dare to address my niece as a lover again on
this voyage, you die. And when we reach the New World I will take
excellent care that you are sent about your business. Remember what I
say. If I hear that you have disobeyed me I will, despite your noble
blood, hang you to the yard-arm, as the first example of the fate which
will surely overtake the man who dares to thwart a De Roberval."

With great difficulty Claude restrained himself under this insulting
language, which nothing but his anxiety for Marguerite could have
induced him to bear. He knew that De Roberval was quite capable of
executing his threats; and he was sufficiently cool to reflect that if
he provoked him farther Marguerite's position would be infinitely worse,
while there was no hope that anything could be accomplished by force. He
therefore compelled himself to bow in silence, and took his departure.

As he left the cabin, he noticed a sleek, shiftless-looking individual,
with spy stamped on every line of his face, standing by the open
gangway. He had a sickly-green complexion, and, as if to match its hue,
he was clad in a shabby green jerkin, rough green cap, green doublet,
and hose of the same colour. It was Michel Gaillon, the first criminal
to die on Canadian soil. He had so far escaped the hand of the law, but
was, even as he stood there, being hunted high and low for a brutal
murder. He carried no rapier. Had he possessed such a weapon he would
probably have feared to draw it lest he might injure himself; but as a
poisoner he was without a peer in France. A crime had been brought home
to him; he saw that it would cost him his neck; and he had contrived to
stow himself away on board _L'Heureux_, and was now on his way to
explain his presence to De Roberval, trusting to luck and his sharp wits
to win his way into the good graces of that nobleman.

He had heard every word which had passed, and he saw at once that he
would have a field for his diabolical machinations. Could Claude have
seen the leer with which the ghastly apparition followed him as he
passed, he would have shuddered with a sense of approaching danger. He
did not look back, however, and the Man in Green, hav