"Spear-head!" exclaimed Hamilton, beginning to understand I too had my design. "Where did you find it?"
"Trying to bury itself in my head." I returned. At this, Laplante, the knave, smiled graciously in my very face.
"But it didn't succeed?" asked Hamilton.
"No—it mistook me for a tree, missed the mark and went into the tree; just as another friend of mine mistook me for a tree, hit the mark and ran into me," and I smiled back at Laplante. His face clouded. That reference to the scene on the beach, where his Hudson's Bay despatches were stolen, was too much for his hot blood. "Here it is," I continued, pulling the spear-head out of my plaid. I had brought it to Hamilton, hoping to identify our enemy, and we did. "Please see if they fit, Sir? We might identify our—friends!" and I searched the furtive, guilty eyes of the Frenchman.
"Dat frien'," muttered Louis with a threatening look at me, "dat frien' of Mister Hamilton he spike good English for Scot' youth."
Now Louis, as I remembered from Laval days, never mixed his English and French, except when he was in passion furious beyond all control.
"Fit!" cried Hamilton. "They're a perfect fit, and both carved the same, too."
"With what?"
"Eagles," answered Eric, puzzled at my drift, and Louis Laplante wore the last look of the tiger before it springs.
"And eagles," said I, defying the spring, "signify that both the spear-head and the spear-handle belong to the Sioux chief whose daughter"—and I lowered my voice to a whisper which only Laplante and Hamilton could hear—"is married—to Le—Grand—Diable!"