“I s’pose it don’t pay, Paul, to be drawin’ sech splendiferous pictures uv what ain’t.  Now I’ve gone an’ made myself onhappy, talkin’ uv them glorious huntin’ grounds that stretch away without end, when here we are in this hot box so narrer I can’t straighten out my legs.  Besides, I’m gittin’ pow’ful hungry.  I wonder ef they mean to starve us to death.  Strikes me that’s an awful mean way uv killin’ a man.  He not only dies but he’s so terrible hungry sech a long time.”

But Long Jim’s forebodings were not fulfilled.  When the light that came through the little windows began to grow dusky, the door was thrown open and Luiz and another man entered with food and water.  Luiz could not speak English, but he could make pantomime, and in that dumb but suggestive way he invited them to partake freely.  Long Jim’s good humor returned.

“Don’t keer ef I do, Mr. Spaniard,” he said jovially.  “It’s a failin’ uv mine to want to eat whenever I’m hungry, an’ since you’re invitin’, why, I’ll jest accept.”

The door was left open while Luiz and the soldier were inside, but several other soldiers were on guard at the opening, and there was no chance for a dash.  But fresh air came in, the cooler air of the evening, and Paul and Long Jim were greatly relieved.  Yet Jim Hart cast many a longing glance at the open door.  Outside was the wide world, and his place was there.  Darkness was coming, but darkness would have no terrors for Long Jim, if only there were no walls about him.

When hunger and thirst were satisfied, Luiz and his comrade fell back respectfully.  A tall figure, followed by a man bearing a torch, entered the doorway.

The man was Francisco Alvarez, but neither Paul nor Long Jim rose, Paul because he disliked the Spaniard and considered him a bitter enemy of his people, Long Jim because he saw no reason why he should rise for anybody.

Alvarez looked down at them and the sight of the two caused him a mixture of anger and triumph.  His wound still stung, but at the bottom of his heart was a feeling that he had deserved it.  In the presence of his own retainers, and with all the circumstances in his favor, he had sought to humiliate a boy.  But this faint feeling was not enough to induce corresponding action.  He was also something of a statesman, and he saw the power behind these two who had come out of the woods.  They were foresters, they wore the tanned skin of the deer, but they belonged to the soil; they were natives, while he, in all his brilliant uniform and gold lace, was a foreigner, merely the long, extended arm of a power four thousand miles away.  The two were but a vanguard, others would come and yet others in a volume, always increasing.  The only possibility of saving Louisiana was to cut off the stream at the fountain head, while it was yet a thin and trickling rill, and he, Francisco Alvarez, was the man for the deed.

It was because such thoughts as these were passing through his head that he did not speak for at least a minute, but stood steadily regarding Paul and Long Jim.  He knew instinctively that it was Paul to whom he must speak, the boy with the thoughtful, dreamy eye, who, like himself, would gaze far into the future.