s Sutherland, winced under my
watchfulness.

"The carvings!" answered Eric, annoyed that I did not return his plain
signals and determined to get my eye. "Pray look for yourself! Where are
your eyes?"

"I can't see in this poor light, Sir; but I also have a strangely carved
thing--a spear-head. Now if this head has no handle and this handle has
no head--they might fit," I went on watching Laplante, whose saucy
assurance was deserting him.

"Spear-head!" exclaimed Hamilton, beginning to understand I too had my
design. "Where did you find it?"

"Trying to bury itself in my head." I returned. At this, Laplante, the
knave, smiled graciously in my very face.

"But it didn't succeed?" asked Hamilton.

"No--it mistook me for a tree, missed the mark and went into the tree;
just as another friend of mine mistook me for a tree, hit the mark and
ran into me," and I smiled back at Laplante. His face clouded. That
reference to the scene on the beach, where his Hudson's Bay despatches
were stolen, was too much for his hot blood. "Here it is," I continued,
pulling the spear-head out of my plaid. I had brought it to Hamilton,
hoping to identify our enemy, and we did. "Please see if they fit, Sir?
We might identify our--friends!" and I searched the furtive, guilty eyes
of the Frenchman.

"Dat frien'," muttered Louis with a threatening look at me, "dat frien'
of Mister Hamilton he spike good English for Scot' youth."

Now Louis, as I remembered from Laval days, never mixed his English and
French, except when he was in passion furious beyond all control.

"Fit!" cried Hamilton. "They're a perfect fit, and both carved the same,
too."

"With what?"

"Eagles," answered Eric, puzzled at my drift, and Louis Laplante wore
the last look of the tiger before it springs.

"And eagles," said I, defying the spring, "signify that both the
spear-head and the spear-handle belong to the Sioux chief whose
daughter"--and I lowered my voice to a whisper which only Laplante and
Hamilton could hear--"is married--to Le--Grand--Diable!"

"What!" came Hamilton's low cry of agony. Forgetting the fractured arm,
he sprang erect.

And Louis Laplante staggered back in the dark as if we had struck him.

"Laplante! Laplante! Where's that Frenchman? Bring him up here!" called
Governor McDonell's fussy, angry tones.

Coming when it did, this demand was to Louis a bolt of judgment; and he
joined the conference with a face as gray as ashes.

"Now abo