The group, that at first glimpse had seemed some conclave of beings uncouth and lubberly and solely of the forest, resolved itself into the Indian teacher and his pupils, escaped for the afternoon from the bounds of William and Mary. The Indian lads—slender, bronze, and statuesque—sat in silence, stolidly listening to the words of the white man, who, standing in the midst of the ring, with his back to the elm-tree, told to his dusky charges a Bible tale. It was the story of Joseph and his brethren. The clear, gentle tones of the teacher reached MacLean's ears where he stood unobserved behind a roadside growth of bay and cedar.
A touch upon the shoulder made him turn, to find at his elbow that sometime pupil of Mr. Charles Griffin in whose company he had once trudged from Fair View store to Williamsburgh.
"I was lying in the woods over there," said Hugon sullenly. "I heard them coming, and I took my leave. 'Peste!' said I. 'The old, weak man who preaches quietness under men's injuries, and the young wolf pack, all brown, with Indian names!' They may have the woods; for me, I go back to the town where I belong."
He shrugged his shoulders, and stood scowling at the distant group. MacLean, in his turn, looked curiously at his quondam companion of a sunny day in May, the would-be assassin with whom he had struggled in wind and rain beneath the thunders of an August storm. The trader wore his great wig, his ancient steinkirk of tawdry lace, his high boots of Spanish leather, cracked and stained. Between the waves of coarse hair, out of coal-black, deep-set eyes looked the soul of the half-breed, fierce, vengeful, ignorant, and embittered.
"There is Meshawa," he said,—"Meshawa, who was a little boy when I went to school, but who used to laugh when I talked of France. Pardieu! one day I found him alone when it was cold, and there was a fire in the room. Next time I talked he did not laugh! They are all"—he swept his hand toward the circle beneath the elm—"they are all Saponies, Nottoways, Meherrins; their fathers are lovers of the peace pipe, and humble to the English. A Monacan is a great brave; he laughs at the Nottoways, and says that there are no men in the villages of the Meherrins."
"When do you go again to trade with your people?" asked MacLean.
Hugon glanced at him out of the corners of his black eyes. "They are not my people; my people are French. I am not going to the woods any more. I am so prosperous. Diable! shall not I as well as another stay at Williamsburgh, dress fine, dwell in an ordinary, play high, and drink of the best?"
"There is none will prevent you," said MacLean coolly. "Dwell in town, take your ease in your inn, wear gold lace, stake the skins of all the deer in Virginia, drink Burgundy and Champagne, but lay no more arrows athwart the threshold of a gentleman's door."
Hugon's lips twitched into a tigerish grimace. "So he found the arrow? Mortdieu! let him look to it that one day the arrow find not him!"
"If I were Haward," said MacLean, "I would have you taken up."