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.”

The trader again looked sideways at the speaker, shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand.  “Oh, he—­he despises me too much for that!  Eh bien! to-day I love to see him live.  When there is no wine in the cup, but only dregs that are bitter, I laugh to see it at his lips.  She,—­Ma’m’selle Audrey, that never before could I coax into my boat,—­she reached me her hand, she came with me down the river, through the night-time, and left him behind at Westover.  Ha! think you not that was bitter, that drink which she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View?  Since then, if I go to that house, that garden at Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not see me; the man and his wife make excuse!  Bad!  But also he sees her never.  He writes to her:  she answers not.  Good!  Let him live, with the fire built around him and the splinters in his heart!”

He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox.  The snow was now falling more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon the road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm.  “Are you for Williamsburgh?” demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhat abruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.