Henry thrust the folds of deerskin in his pocket and sprang to his feet.
"Now, you scoundrel!" he exclaimed, "tell what tale you please and we will prove another!"
Then the terrible reality resolved itself back into a shadow, and was gone. Braxton Wyatt sprang to his feet, clapped his hand to his mangled waistcoat where the precious package had been, and uttered a strangled cry. Then he ran through the trees to the house of Alvarez.
A quarter of an hour later Oliver Pollock was sitting at his own window in the little office and his thoughts were not happy. He wished his fleet of supply canoes to start on the great river journey at once, but it could not depart while such storms were threatening. Alvarez was too serious a danger, and he must be removed. But the merchant realized that he had made little progress. Alvarez seemed to be secure in his plot.
There came a knock at his door, and in reply to his request to enter, a clerk said that the young man, Mr. Ware, had returned. Mr. Pollock rose to his feet as Henry came in. Henry carefully closed the door behind him, advanced, and put a small package in Mr. Pollock's hand.
"There they are!" he said, "the maps drawn up by Braxton Wyatt, and with notes on them in handwriting, which I take to be that of Francisco Alvarez."
The merchant stared at first in astonishment and delight. Then he ran to the lamp and spread out the sheets of fine, thin deerskin. He looked at them, one by one, and laughed with delight.
"Yes," he said, "the notes are in the handwriting of Francisco Alvarez! I know it—I have seen it often enough—and Bernardo Galvez will know it, too! Oh, it is a great find! a great find! It is not conclusive proof, but it will go far toward swaying belief! How did you get them?"
Henry had recovered from all signs of his struggle with the renegade, and was now sitting placidly in a chair.