“It is the plan to send him a prisoner to Spain on the galleon, Dona Isabel, as you know, but I fear that we have not heard the last of him.  He is a man of fierce temper, and now he is wild with rage and mortification.  Moreover, he has many followers here in New Orleans.  All the desperadoes, adventurers, former galley slaves, and others of that type would have been ready to rally around him.  But I have come to tell you good-bye.  I go again in my canoe up the Mississippi.”

“Can’t you stay a while in New Orleans and rest?” asked Paul—­the sympathy between Paul and the priest was strong, each having a certain spiritual quality that was in agreement.

“No,” replied Father Montigny, “I cannot stay.  You came on your task in spite of hardships and dangers because you felt that a power urged you to it.  Farewell.  We may meet again or we may not, as Heaven wills.”

They followed him to the door and when he was almost out of sight he turned and waved his hand to them.

The next day New Orleans, which was already deeply stirred by news of the plot of Alvarez and its discovery, had another thrill.  It was Lieutenant Diego Bernal who told the five of it at the counting house of Oliver Pollock.

“Francisco Alvarez has escaped,” he said.  “The watch at the prison was none too strict; it may be that some of the guards themselves were friends of his.  In any event, he is gone from the city, and his going has been followed by the departure of many men whom New Orleans could well spare.  But whether their going now will be to our benefit I cannot tell.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked Henry, “that all these men have gone away to join Alvarez in some desperate adventure?”

“I have an impression, although my impressions are usually false,” replied the Lieutenant, “that such is the case.  The Chickasaws, the Creeks, and other tribes of these regions are his friends because he has promised them much.  A capable officer with a hundred desperate white men at his back and a horde of Indians might create stirring events.”

The five became very thoughtful over what he said, but when Lieutenant Diego Bernal was taking his leave he looked at them rather enviously.

“You five inspire me with a certain jealousy,” he said.  “I have an impression, although my impressions are usually wrong and my memory always weak, that you are strongly attached to one another, that no one ever hesitates to risk death for the others, that you are bound together by a hundred ties, and that you act together for the common good.  Ah, that is something like friendship, real friendship, I should like to be one of a band like yours, but I look in vain for such a thing in New Orleans.”

“I wish that you were going with us,” said Henry heartily.

“I wish it, too.  Often I long for the great forests and the free air as you do, but my service is due here to Bernardo Galvez, who is my good friend.  But it is pleasant to see that you have triumphed so finely.”