There was no discomposure in the schoolmaster’s dress, and as little in his face or manner.  He bowed to the two gentlemen, then shambled across to the fire, and as best he could held out his bound hands to the grateful blaze.  “May I ask, sir,” he said, in his lifeless voice, “why it is that this youth and I, resting in all peace and quietness beside a public road, should be set upon by your servants, overpowered, bound, and haled to your house as to a judgment bar?”

Haward, to whom this speech was addressed, gave it no attention.  His gaze was upon Hugon, who in his turn glared at him alone.  Haward had a subtle power of forcing and fixing the attention of a company; in crowded rooms, without undue utterance or moving from his place, he was apt to achieve the centre of the stage, the head of the table.  Now, the half-breed, by very virtue of the passion which, false to his Indian blood, shook him like a leaf, of a rage which overmastered and transformed, reached at a bound the Englishman’s plane of distinction.  His great wig, of a fashion years gone by, was pulled grotesquely aside, showing the high forehead and shaven crown beneath; his laced coat and tawdry waistcoat and ruffled shirt were torn and foul with mud and mould, but the man himself made to be forgotten the absurdity of his trappings.  Gone, for him, were his captors, his accomplice, the spectator in gold and russet; to Haward, also, sitting very cold, very quiet, with narrowed eyes, they were gone.  He was angered, and in the mood to give rein after his own fashion to that anger.  MacLean and the master of Westover, the overseer and the schoolmaster, were forgotten, and he and Hugon met alone as they might have met in the forest.  Between them, and without a spoken word, the two made this fact to be recognized by the other occupants of the drawing-room.  Colonel Byrd, who had been standing with his hand upon the table, moved backward until he joined MacLean beside the closed door:  Saunderson drew near to the schoolmaster:  and the centre of the room was left to the would-be murderer and the victim that had escaped him.

“Monsieur le Monacan,” said Haward.

Hugon snarled like an angry wolf, and strained at the rope which bound his arms.

Haward went on evenly:  “Your tribe has smoked the peace pipe with the white man.  I was not told it by singing birds, but by the great white father at Williamsburgh.  They buried the hatchet very deep; the dead leaves of many moons of Cohonks lie thick upon the place where they buried it.  Why have you made a warpath, treading it alone of your color?”

“Diable!” cried Hugon.  “Pig of an Englishman!  I will kill you for”—­

“For an handful of blue beads,” said Haward, with a cold smile.  “And I, dog of an Indian!  I will send a Nottoway to teach the Monacans how to lay a snare and hide a trail.”

The trader, gasping with passion, leaned across the table until his eyes were within a foot of Haward’s unmoved face.  “Who showed you the trail and told you of the snare?” he whispered.  “Tell me that, you Englishman,—­tell me that!”