The Grey Cloak - Page 230/256

So the amiable dog became a lion, bold, impudent, mocking; the mask was

gone forever, both from his face and his desires. He wore his empty

scabbard with all the effrontery of a man who had fought and won his

first duel. Du Puys had threatened to hang the man who gave the

vicomte a sword. As the majority of the colonists were ignorant of

what lay behind this remarkable quarrel, they naturally took sides with

the man whose laugh was more frequent than his frown. Thus, the

vicomte still shuffled the ebon dominoes of a night and sang out

jovially, "Doubles!" Whenever the man he had so basely wronged passed

him, he spat contemptuously and cried: "See, Messieurs, what it is to

be without a sword!" And as for Brother Jacques, it was: "And how is

Monsieur Jacques's health this fine morning?" or "What a handsome rogue

of a priest you are!" or "Can you tell me where I may find a sword?" He

laughed at D'Hérouville, and bantered the poet on his silence,--the

poet whose finer sense and intuition had distrusted the vicomte from

the first.

One day madame came out to feed the mission's chickens. Her hand swung

to and fro, and like a stream of yellow gold the shelled corn trailed

through the air to the ground. The fowls clustered around her noisily.

She was unaware of the vicomte, who leaned against the posts of the

palisade.

There was in his glance which said: "Madame, I offered to make you my

wife; now I shall make you something less." And seeing the Chevalier

stirring inside the fort, he mused: "My faith, but that old marquis

must have had an eye. The fellow's mother must have been a handsome

wench."

Once the vicomte came secretly upon D'Hérouville, Frémin, Pauquet, and

the woodsman named The Fox because of his fiery hair and beard, peaked

face and beady eyes. When the party broke up, the vicomte emerged from

his hiding place, wearing a smile which boded no good to whatever plot

or plan D'Hérouville had conceived. And that same night he approached

each of D'Hérouville's confederates and spoke. What passed only they

themselves knew; but when the vicomte left them they were irrevocably

his.

"Eye of the bull!" murmured Corporal Frémin, "but this vicomte is much

of a man. As for the Chevalier, what the devil! his fingers have been

sunken into my throat."

A mile from the mission, toward the north, of the lake, stood a hut of

Indian construction. It had been erected long before the mission. It

served as a half-way to the savages after days of hunting in the

northern confines of the country of the Onondagas. Here the savages

would rest of a night before carrying the game to the village in the

hills. It was well hidden from the eyes, thick foliage and vines

obscuring it from the view of those at the mission. But there was a

well worn path leading to it. It was here that tragedy entered into

the comedy of these various lives.