Audrey

Setting to work again, he pushed to the heavy shutters. "You'll find them

open in the morning," he said, "and find me selling,--selling clothing

that I may not wear, wine that I may not drink, powder and shot that I may

not spend, swords that I may not use; and giving,--giving pride, manhood,

honor, heart's blood"-He broke off, shot to the bar across the shutters, and betook himself in

silence to the other window, where presently he burst into a fit of

laughter. The sound was harsh even to savagery. "Go your ways,

Saunderson," he said. "I've tried the bars of the cage; they're too

strong. Stop on your morning round, and I'll give account of my trading."

The overseer gone, the windows barred, and the heavy door shut and locked

behind him, MacLean paused upon the doorstep to look down upon his

appointed companion. The trader, half sitting, half reclining upon a log,

was striking at something with the point of his hunting-knife, lightly,

delicately, and often. The something was a lizard, about which, as it lay

in the sunshine upon the log, he had wrought a pen of leafy twigs. The

creature, darting for liberty this way and that, was met at every turn by

the steel, and at every turn suffered a new wound. MacLean looked; then

bent over and with a heavy stick struck the thing out of its pain.

"There's a time to work and a time to play, Hugon," he said coolly.

"Playtime's over now. The sun is high, and Isaac and the oxen must have

the skins well-nigh to Williamsburgh. Up with you!"

Hugon rose to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced in

good enough English that he was ready. He had youth, the slender, hardy,

perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a countenance that

were not of the white and not of the brown. When he went a-trading up the

river, past the thickly settled country, past the falls, past the French

town which his Huguenot father had helped to build, into the deep woods

and to the Indian village whence had strayed his mother, he wore the

clothing that became the woods,--beaded moccasins, fringed leggings,

hunting-shirt of deerskin, cap of fur,--looked his part and played it

well. When he came back to an English country, to wharves and stores, to

halls and porches of great houses and parlors of lesser ones, to the

streets and ordinaries of Williamsburgh, he pulled on jack boots, shrugged

himself into a coat with silver buttons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at

neck and wrists, wore a cocked hat and a Blenheim wig, and became a figure

alike grotesque and terrible. Two thirds of the time his business caused

him to be in the forests that were far away; but when he returned to

civilization, to stare it in the face and brag within himself, "I am lot

and part of what I see!" he dwelt at the crossroads ordinary, drank and

gamed with Paris the schoolmaster and Darden the minister, and dreamed (at

times) of Darden's Audrey.