"When do you go again to trade with your people?" asked MacLean.
Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. "They are not
my people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any more. I
am so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay at
Williamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and drink of
the best?"
"There is none will prevent you," said MacLean coolly. "Dwell in town,
take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all the
deer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrows
athwart the threshold of a gentleman's door."
Hugon's lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. "So he found the arrow?
Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!"
"If I were Haward," said MacLean, "I would have you taken up."
The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his shoulders
and waved his hand. "Oh, he--he despises me too much for that! Eh bien!
to-day I love to see him live. When there is no wine in the cup, but only
dregs that are bitter, I laugh to see it at his lips. She,--Ma'm'selle
Audrey, that never before could I coax into my boat,--she reached me her
hand, she came with me down the river, through the night-time, and left
him behind at Westover. Ha! think you not that was bitter, that drink
which she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Since then, if I go
to that house, that garden at Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not see
me; the man and his wife make excuse! Bad! But also he sees her never. He
writes to her: she answers not. Good! Let him live, with the fire built
around him and the splinters in his heart!"
He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat
exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now falling
more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon the
road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm. "Are
you for Williamsburgh?" demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhat
abruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.
That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a great
jingling of coins.
"Then," quoth MacLean, "since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait here
until you have passed the rolling-house in the distance yonder. Good-day
to you!"