"Don't waste your breath, Louis," I quietly remarked. "Your names have no more terror for me now than at Laval! However big a knave you are, Louis, you're not a fool. Why don't you make something out of this? I can reward you. Hold me, if you like! Scalp me and skin me and put me under a stone-pile for revenge! Will it make your revenge any sweeter to torture a helpless, white woman?"
Louis winced. 'Twas the first sign of goodness I had seen in the knave, and I credited it wholly to his French ancestors.
"I never torture white woman," he vehemently declared, with a sudden flare-up of his proud temper. "The son of a seigneur——"
"The son of a seigneur," I broke in, "let an innocent woman go into captivity by lying to me!"
"Don't harp on that!" said Louis with a scornful laugh—a laugh that is ever the refuge of the cornered liar. "You pay me back by stealing despatches."
"Don't harp on that, Louis!" and I returned his insolence in full measure. "I didn't steal your despatches, though I know the thief. And you paid me back by almost trapping me at Fort Douglas."
"But I didn't succeed," exclaimed Laplante. "Mon Dieu! If I had only known you were a spy!"
"I wasn't. I came to see Hamilton."
"And you pay me back as if I had succeed," continued Louis, "by kicking me—me—the son of a seigneur—kicking me in the stomach like a pig, which is no fit treatment for a gentleman!"
"And you paid me back by sticking your knife in my boot——"