"Ground arms, my lads. Now pile them against the hut. Good. Enter now and fetch monsieur. You will carry out the colonel's orders."
In a minute Steve was being conveyed across the open, while Jules Lapon looked on as if dazed. Then he turned, rushed across to his own dwelling, and broke the door open with a furious kick. He was beaten. At the very last minute the life at which he had been aiming for so many months now, for some subtle reason of his own, was saved, and the prisoner, in place of standing up before the muskets of a firing party, was being quartered in the colonel's own hut. Jules ground his teeth with fury, and filled the bowl of his pipe with savage energy.
Chapter XV
Off to Quebec
"You have to thank a very fine and robust constitution, and the open-air life which you have lived for your excellent progress, monsieur," said the French colonel one morning, some six weeks after Steve had been taken prisoner, as the two sat in front of a cozy log fire in the speaker's hut, "and I have to thank fortune—bad fortune for you, perhaps, monsieur—that some weeks of what would have been a weary time for me have passed so very pleasantly. It is the fortune of war, good for me, bad for you, and in either case to be taken philosophically."
"For myself, I admit that I am sorry to have been taken prisoner," replied Steve with a smile, "but then I might have been in the hands of Monsieur Jules, instead of in yours, colonel, and then——"
"Monsieur Steve would not have been here. You have not forgotten the firing party and the wall. Yes, that wretch would have had you shot, for he has some spite against you. Tell me, Monsieur Steve, have you ever done this compatriot of mine an injury, other than defeating him in the course of this war?"
Steve shook his head emphatically. "None," he said.
"Then there must be some other reason for his enmity. You speak French like a native, monsieur, while you are an English colonist born and bred. That is curious."