Mount came swaggering back, pausing to drop the warrant on the hot coals as he passed. Renard returned in a few minutes, took his rifle, and squatted briskly down just beyond the fire-light.
As Mount came up to me, I rose and thanked him for the protection he had given so generously, and he laughed and laid one padded fist on my shoulder.
"Hark ye, friend," he said; "take your Indian belts and your pack and go in peace, for if Dunmore is after you, the sooner you start north the better. Go, lad; I'm not your enemy!"
"I go south," I replied, cautiously.
"Oh, you do, eh?" said Mount, fumbling in his pockets for the flint he had taken from my rifle. "Are you bound for Cresap's camp, too?"
"Are you?" I asked, reddening.
He rubbed his chin, watching me with sulky eyes.
"You answer ever with a question!" he complained, fretfully. "I ask you this and you ask me that—tom tiddle! tiddle tom!—and I be no wiser now for all I have heard your name."
"I know Michael Cardigan," observed the Weasel, quietly coming up, buckling on his pack.
"It's an honourable name," I began, in desperation, striving to stop him, but the Weasel ignored me and addressed himself to Mount.