ey should be sent to Bernardo
Galvez at New Orleans, and not be retained here."

He walked out without waiting for an answer, and Francisco Alvarez was
glad to see him go. Five minutes later the Spaniard sent for Braxton Wyatt
and the two remained long in consultation.

Meanwhile, something was stirring in the forest not far from Beaulieu. It
was a forest of magnolia, willow, and cypress, and of oaks, from which
hung great solemn festoons of moss. A deep still bayou cut across it, and
here and there were pools of stagnant water, in which coiling black forms
swam.

Night was deepening over the wilderness upon which the estate of Beaulieu
had made only a scratch. Pale moonlight fell over the drooping green
forest and across the deep waters of the bayou. The something that had
stirred resolved itself into the shadowy figure of a man who came out of
the heart of the forest toward its edge. He walked with a singularly agile
step. His moccasined feet made no noise when they touched the ground and
the bushes seemed to part for the passage of his body.

When the man reached the edge of the forest next to the Chateau of
Beaulieu, he paused for a long time, standing in the shadow of the trees.
Always he looked fixedly at a single building, the log hut, in which
Alvarez held his four prisoners from Kaintock. While he stood there, stray
rays of moonlight coming through the cypresses fell upon him, revealing a
tanned face, yellow hair, and a tall, athletic form. He did not look like
a Spaniard or an Acadian, or one of the Frenchmen who had emigrated from
Canada, or any kind of a West Indian. His was certainly an alien presence
in those regions.

The moon slid back behind a cloud, the silver rays failed, and the figure
of the man became more indistinct, almost a shadow, thin and impalpable.
Then he bent far over in a stooping position, passed rapidly through a
patch of scrub bushes, and came much nearer to the log prison.

At the edge of the bushes he stopped again and watched the prison for at
least a minute. Two soldiers were on watch in front of it before the
single door, two soldiers in Spanish uniform, who were suffering from
tedium, and who were quite sure, anyway that unarmed prisoners could not
escape from a one-room building of logs with but a single door, secured by
a huge, oak shutter, and two windows, each too small to admit the passage
of a boy's or man's body.

The two soldiers slouched in their walk, and present