to step forward, and to see that their rifles were charged.  Pepin waited quietly until his arrangements were completed, and then, looking round upon the crowd with his dark eyes, and finally fixing them upon the arch rebel, he spoke with such strength and earnestness that his hearers stood breathless and spellbound.  The file of men which had been drawn up to act as executioners, and the condemned man himself, hung upon his words.  It was significant that, after the fatal shot had been fired, no one seemed to be apprehensive of a second.

“Louis Riel,” he began, “you are one bigger fool than I did take you for!”

Riel started forward angrily, and was about to speak when the dwarf stopped him with a motion of his hand.

“You are a fool because you cannot see where you are going,” he continued.

“Can’t I, Mr. Hop-o’-my-thumb?” broke out the rebel in a white heat, shouldering his rifle.

But the dwarf raised his stick warningly, and catching Riel’s shifty gaze, held it as if by some spell until the rifle barrel sunk lower inch by inch.

“If you do, Louis Riel, if you do, the Lord will give you short shrift!” he said.  “Now, I will tell you what I see, and to you it ought to be plain, for you have been in Montreal and Quebec, and know much more than is known to the metis.  I see—­and it will come to pass long before the ice that is in one great mass in this river is carried down and melts in the big lakes, whose waters drain into the Bay of Hudson—­I see the soldiers of the great Queen swarming all over the land in numbers like the gophers on the prairie.  They have wrested from you Battleford, Prince Albert, and Batoche.  I see a battlefield, and the soldiers of the Queen have the great guns—­as big as Red River carts—­that shoot high into the air as flies the kite, and rain down bullets and jagged iron like unto the hailstorms that sweep the land in summer time.  I see the bodies of the metis lying dead upon the ground as thick as the sheaves of wheat upon the harvest-field.  Many I see that crawl away into the woods to die, like to the timber-wolves when they have eaten of the poison.  I see the metis scattered and homeless.  I see you, Louis Riel, who have misled them, skulking alone in the woods like a hunted coyote, without rest night and day, with nothing to eat, and with no moccasins to your feet.  But the red-coats will catch you, for there is no trail too long or too broken for the Riders of the Plains to follow.  And, above all, and take heed, Louis Riel, I see the great beams of the gallows-tree looming up blackly against the grey of a weary dawn; and that will be your portion if you shoot this man.  Put him in prison if you will, and keep him as a hostage; but if you spill innocent blood wantonly, as the Lord liveth, you shall swing in mid-air.  And now I have spoken, and you have all seen how the hand of the Lord directed the bullet that laid that thing low.  Remember this—­there are more bullets!”