"Yes, yes," Diana murmured, in an indistinct voice.
"He is a Frenchman," Black asserted. "There cannot be a doubt of that: those Canadian scoundrels are incapable of acting in the way he did to us."
Like all the North Americans, Black heartily detested the Canadians; why he did so, he could not have said, but this hatred was innate in his heart.
"Bah!" William said, "what matter his country, he has a fine heart, and is a true gentleman. For my part, father, I know a certain William Black, who is ready to die for him."
"By heaven!" the squatter exclaimed, as he struck the table with his fist, "you would be only doing your duty, and discharging a sacred debt: I would give anything to see him again, and prove to him that I am not ungrateful."
"Well spoken, father," William said joyously; "honest men are too rare in the world for us not to cling to those we know; if we should meet again, I will show him what sort of man I am."
During this rapid interchange of words, Diana said nothing; she listened, with outstretched neck, beaming face, and a smile on her lips, happy to hear a man thus spoken of, whom she unconsciously loved since she first saw him. Mrs. Black thought it prudent to turn the conversation.
"There is another person to whom we owe great obligations; for if Heaven had not sent her at the right moment to our help, we should have been pitilessly massacred by the Indians; have you already forgotten that person?"
"God forbid!" the squatter exclaimed, quickly, "the poor creature did me too great a service for me to forget her."
"But who on earth can she be?" William said.