St. Pierre rose to his feet and looked about the cabin with a shining light in his eyes that was both pride and exaltation.  He moved toward the end of the room, where the piano stood, and for a moment his big fingers touched the keys; then, seeing the lacy bit of handkerchief that lay there, he picked it up—­and placed it back again.  Carrigan did not urge his question, but waited.  In spite of his effort to fight it down he found himself in the grip of a mysterious and growing thrill as he watched St. Pierre.  Never had the presence of another man had the same effect upon him, and strangely the thought came to him that he was matched—­even overmatched.  It was as if St. Pierre had brought with him into the cabin something more than the splendid strength of his body, a thing that reached out in the interval of silence between them, warning Carrigan that all the law in the world would not swerve the chief of the Boulains from what was already in his mind.  For a moment the thought passed from David that fate had placed him up against the hazard of enmity with St. Pierre.  His vision centered in the man alone.  And as he, too, rose to his feet, an unconscious smile came to his lips as he recalled the boastings of Bateese.

“I ask you,” said he, “if you would really stake your life in a matter such as that?  Of course, if your words were merely accidental, and meant nothing—­”

“If I had a dozen lives, I would stake them, one on top of the other, as I have said,” interrupted St. Pierre.  Suddenly his laugh boomed out and his voice became louder.  “M’sieu Carrigan, I have come to offer you just that test!  Oui, I could kill you now.  I could put you at the bottom of the river, as Bateese thinks is right.  Mon Dieu, how completely I could make you disappear!  And then my Jeanne would be safe.  She would not go behind prison bars.  She would go on living, and laughing, and singing in the big forests, where she belongs.  And Black Roger Audemard, the rascal, would be safe for a time!  But that would be like destroying a little child.  You are so helpless now.  So you are going on to the Chateau Boulain with us, and if at the end of the second month from today you do not willingly say I have won my wager—­why—­ m’sieu—­I will go with you into the forest, and you may shoot out of me the life which is my end of the gamble.  Is that not fair?  Can you suggest a better way—­between men like you and me?”

“I can at least suggest a way that has the virtue of saving time,” replied David.  “First, however, I must understand my position here.  I am, I take it, a prisoner.”

“A guest, with certain restrictions placed upon you, m’sieu,” corrected St. Pierre.

The eyes of the two men met on a dead level.

“Tomorrow morning I am going to fight Bateese,” said David.  “It is a little sporting event we have fixed up between us for the amusement of—­your men.  I have heard that Bateese is the best fighting man along the Three Rivers.  And I—­I do not like to have any other man claim that distinction when I am around.”