om; the former set Lagrange down at a small table
in a far corner with some food before him. The dwarf
lounged towards the fire-place with an assumed air of
indifference and boredom, and, leaning against the
chimney-piece, stroked his black moustache.

"What is it, Pepin, my son?" asked the old lady anxiously.

"Oh, nothing--nothing, my mother; only that they are at
it again!"

"The shameless wretches!" she exclaimed; "will they never
cease? Who is it this time, Pepin?"

"Only that young Douglas female we have spoke about"--he
tried hard to infuse contempt into his voice--"she wants
me to go to her! Just think of it mother! But she is a
preesonar, and, perhaps, it is also my help she wants.
And she was a nice girl, was it not so, _ma mere?_"

Between them they came to the conclusion that Pepin must
go with Bastien to where Dorothy was kept a prisoner and
see what could be done. They also wisely decided that it
was no use notifying or trying to lead the Imperial troops
to the spot, for that might only force the Indians to
some atrocity.

Later on, when the moon arose, Pepin took Lagrange out
and showed him the British camp with its apparently
countless tents, and its battery of guns. It appeared
to the unstable one as if all the armies of the earth
must be camped on that spot. When the dwarf told him that
there were other camps further up the river, to which
the one before him was as nothing, Bastien fairly trembled
in his moccasins. When a sentry challenged them, the
now thoroughly disillusioned breed begged piteously that
they should return to Pepin's house and set out early on
the following morning for the place where Dorothy was
imprisoned up the Saskatchewan, before that army of
soldiers, who surely swarmed like a colony of ants, was
afoot.

Pepin knew that the approach of an army would only be
the means of preventing him from finding Dorothy. He
must go to her himself. He would also, for the sake of
the proprieties, take his mother along in a Red River
cart; his mind was quite made up upon that point. If he
did not do so, who could tell that the Douglas female,
with the cunning of her sex, would not lay some awkward
trap for him? The girl had plainly said, "Come to me,"
and he was secretly elated, but his conviction of old
growth, that all women were "after" him, made him cautious.

So next morning, before break of day, the Red River cart
was packed up and at the door. Pepin and his mother got
int