“You told me once,” said Alvarez “that the three comrades of the two, the three whom we have not captured, are much to be dreaded, and we have had proof of it?”

“It is so.”

“But what can they do now?”

“But little,” answered the renegade.  “It was farther north in the great wilderness, where they are so much at home, that they could do us harm.  Here within the fringe of the French and Spanish settlements, they will be hampered too much.”

“Yes, I should think so,” said Alvarez thoughtfully.  “As you perhaps surmise, I am going to stay here indefinitely, Wyatt.  This place of mine, Beaulieu, I call it, is at a suitable distance from New Orleans and I am an absolute monarch while I remain.  Here, on the border, I am as a military commander, practically lord of life and death, and on one excuse or another I can hold the troops as long as I please.”

“Which seems to me to be very convenient for all our plans,” said Braxton Wyatt.

The Spaniard smiled, but speedily contracted his brows again.  The cut that Paul had given him was hurting.

“I should like to punish that boy in some spectacular manner,” he said.  “I should want him to be humiliated in the presence of others as I was.”

Suddenly he raised his head, which he had bent in thought, and his lips curled in laughter under his yellow mustache.

“I have it!” he exclaimed.  “An idea!  Since young Kaintock can use the sword I shall give him a chance to do it again!  Oh, I shall give him every opportunity!”

Then he leaned over and spoke in lower tones to Braxton Wyatt.  The renegade’s eyes lighted up with delight.

“The very thing!” he exclaimed.  “I’d have it done at once!”

Paul and Long Jim Hart meanwhile were resting in their log prison.  Jim’s arms had been unbound and, after rubbing them freely, he said that the circulation was restored.  Then the two turned their attention to their prison.  Paul surmised that it had been built as a tool house or store house, but at present it was empty save for himself and his comrade, Long Jim.

The only light came from two little windows made merely by cutting out a section of log and quite too small to admit a human body.  They tried the door but it was so strong that they could not shake it.  Then Long Jim lay calmly down on the floor.

“Paul,” he said, “I don’t believe I wuz ever fastened up in sech a little place ez this afore.  Ef I stretch out my legs my feet will hit the wall over thar, an’ the place is so close an’ hot I don’t breathe good.”

“We’ll have to stand it for a while,” said Paul philosophically.

“That’s so,” said Long Jim, “I don’t s’pose they mean to murder us ez we’re not at real war with the Spaniards, so I wonder what they mean to do.”

Paul shook his head.  But he understood better than Long Jim the dangers of their situation.  He knew the temper and character of Alvarez, and he knew, too, that at this distant chateau he was omnipotent.  Alvarez was bent on making war upon the settlers in Kentucky, and nothing would stop him.