MacLean looked with whimsical anxiety at several white particles upon his
suit of fine cloth, claret-colored and silver-laced, and quickened his
pace. But the snow was but the lazy vanguard of a storm, and so few and
harmless were the flakes that when, a, mile from Williamsburgh and at some
little distance from the road, MacLean beheld a ring of figures seated
upon the Gounod beneath a giant elm, he stopped to observe who and what
they were that sat so still beneath the leafless tree in the winter
weather.
The group, that at first glimpse had seemed some conclave of beings
uncouth and lubberly and solely of the forest, resolved itself into the
Indian teacher and his pupils, escaped for the afternoon from the bounds
of William and Mary. The Indian lads--slender, bronze, and statuesque--sat
in silence, stolidly listening to the words of the white man, who,
standing in the midst of the ring, with his back to the elm-tree, told to
his dusky charges a Bible tale. It was the story of Joseph and his
brethren. The clear, gentle tones of the teacher reached MacLean's ears
where he stood unobserved behind a roadside growth of bay and cedar.
A touch upon the shoulder made him turn, to find at his elbow that
sometime pupil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once trudged
from Fair View store to Williamsburgh.
"I was lying in the woods over there," said Hugon sullenly. "I heard them
coming, and I took my leave. 'Peste!' said I. 'The old, weak man who
preaches quietness under men's injuries, and the young wolf pack, all
brown, with Indian names!' They may have the woods; for me, I go back to
the town where I belong."
He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group.
MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunny
day in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in wind and
rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his great
wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanish
leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair, out of
coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce,
vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.
"There is Meshawa," he said,--"Meshawa, who was a little boy when I went
to school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu! one day
I found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in the room. Next
time I talked he did not laugh! They are all"--he swept his hand toward
the circle beneath the elm--"they are all Saponies, Nottoways, Meherrins;
their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe, and humble to the English. A
Monacan is a great brave; he laughs at the Nottoways, and says that there
are no men in the villages of the Meherrins."