“There’s a time to work and a time to play, Hugon,” he said coolly.  “Playtime’s over now.  The sun is high, and Isaac and the oxen must have the skins well-nigh to Williamsburgh.  Up with you!”

Hugon rose to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced in good enough English that he was ready.  He had youth, the slender, hardy, perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a countenance that were not of the white and not of the brown.  When he went a-trading up the river, past the thickly settled country, past the falls, past the French town which his Huguenot father had helped to build, into the deep woods and to the Indian village whence had strayed his mother, he wore the clothing that became the woods,—­beaded moccasins, fringed leggings, hunting-shirt of deerskin, cap of fur,—­looked his part and played it well.  When he came back to an English country, to wharves and stores, to halls and porches of great houses and parlors of lesser ones, to the streets and ordinaries of Williamsburgh, he pulled on jack boots, shrugged himself into a coat with silver buttons, stuck lace of a so-so quality at neck and wrists, wore a cocked hat and a Blenheim wig, and became a figure alike grotesque and terrible.  Two thirds of the time his business caused him to be in the forests that were far away; but when he returned to civilization, to stare it in the face and brag within himself, “I am lot and part of what I see!” he dwelt at the crossroads ordinary, drank and gamed with Paris the schoolmaster and Darden the minister, and dreamed (at times) of Darden’s Audrey.

The miles to Williamsburgh were long and sunny, with the dust thick beneath the feet.  Warm and heavy, the scented spring possessed the land.  It was a day for drowsing in the shade:  for them who must needs walk in the sunshine, languor of thought overtook them, and sparsity of speech.  They walked rapidly, step with step, their two lean and sinewy bodies casting the same length of shadow; but they kept their eyes upon the long glare of white dust, and told not their dreams.  At a point in the road where the storekeeper saw only confused marks and a powdering of dust upon the roadside bushes, the half-breed announced that there had been that morning a scuffle in a gang of negroes; that a small man had been thrown heavily to the earth, and a large man had made off across a low ditch into the woods; that the overseer had parted the combatants, and that some one’s back had bled.  No sooner was this piece of clairvoyance aired than he was vexed that he had shown a hall-mark of the savage, and hastily explained that life in the woods, such as a trader must live, would teach any man—­an Englishman, now, as well as a Frenchman—­how to read what was written on the earth.  Farther on, when they came to a miniature glen between the semblance of two hills, down which, in mockery of a torrent, brabbled a slim brown stream, MacLean stood still, gazed for a minute, then, whistling, caught up with his companion, and spoke at length upon the subject of the skins awaiting them at Williamsburgh.