Audrey

"Monsieur le Monacan," said Haward.

Hugon snarled like an angry wolf, and strained at the rope which bound his

arms.

Haward went on evenly: "Your tribe has smoked the peace pipe with the

white man. I was not told it by singing birds, but by the great white

father at Williamsburgh. They buried the hatchet very deep; the dead

leaves of many moons of Cohonks lie thick upon the place where they buried

it. Why have you made a warpath, treading it alone of your color?"

"Diable!" cried Hugon. "Pig of an Englishman! I will kill you for"-"For an handful of blue beads," said Haward, with a cold smile. "And I,

dog of an Indian! I will send a Nottoway to teach the Monacans how to lay

a snare and hide a trail."

The trader, gasping with passion, leaned across the table until his eyes

were within a foot of Haward's unmoved face. "Who showed you the trail and

told you of the snare?" he whispered. "Tell me that, you

Englishman,--tell me that!"

"A storm bird," said Haward calmly. "Okee is perhaps angry with his

Monacans, and sent it."

"Was it Audrey?"

Haward laughed. "No, it was not Audrey. And so, Monacan, you have yourself

fallen into the pit which you digged."

From the fireplace came the schoolmaster's slow voice: "Dear sir, can you

show the pit? Why should this youth desire to harm you? Where is the storm

bird? Can you whistle it before a justice of the peace or into a court

room?"

If Haward heard, it did not appear. He was leaning back in his chair, his

eyes fixed upon the trader's twitching face in a cold and smiling regard.

"Well, Monacan?" he demanded.

The half-breed straightened himself, and with a mighty effort strove in

vain for a composure that should match the other's cold self-command,--a

command which taunted and stung now at this point, now at that. "I am a

Frenchman!" he cried, in a voice that broke with passion. "I am of the

noblesse of the land of France, which is a country that is much grander

than Virginia! Old Pierre at Monacan-Town told me these things. My father

changed his name when he came across the sea, so I bear not the de which

is a sign of a great man. Listen, you Englishman! I trade, I prosper, I

buy me land, I begin to build me a house. There is a girl that I see every

hour, every minute, while I am building it. She says she loves me not, but

nevertheless I shall wed her. Now I see her in this room, now in that; she

comes down the stair, she smiles at the window, she stands on the

doorstep to welcome me when I come home from my hunting and trading in

the woods so far away. I bring her fine skins of the otter, the beaver,

and the fawn; beadwork also from the villages and bracelets of copper and

pearl. The flowers bloom around her, and my heart sings to see her upon my

doorstep.... The flowers are dead, and you have stolen the girl away....

There was a stream, and the sun shone upon it, and you and she were in a

boat. I walked alone upon the bank, and in my heart I left building my

house and fell to other work. You laughed; one day you will laugh no more.

That was many suns ago. I have watched"-Foam was upon his lips, and he strained without ceasing at his bonds.

Already pulled far awry, his great peruke, a cataract of hair streaming

over his shoulders, shading and softening the swarthy features between its

curled waves, now slipped from his head and fell to the floor. The change

which its absence wrought was startling. Of the man the moiety that was

white disappeared. The shaven head, its poise, its features, were Indian;

the soul was Indian, and looked from Indian eyes. Suddenly, for the last

transforming touch, came a torrent of words in a strange tongue, the

tongue of his mother. Of what he was speaking, what he was threatening, no

one of them could tell; he was a savage giving voice to madness and hate.