Colonel de Haldimar looked at him enquiringly.

“You have still a son left,” pursued the prisoner with the same recklessness of manner, and in a tone denoting allusion to him who was no more, that caused an universal shudder throughout the ranks.  “He is in the hands of the Ottawa Indians, and I am the friend of their great chief, inferior only in power among the tribe to himself.  Think you that he will see me hanged up like a dog, and fail to avenge my disgraceful death?”

“Ha! presumptuous renegade, is this the deep game you have in view?  Hope you then to stipulate for the preservation of a life every way forfeited to the offended justice of your country?  Dare you to cherish the belief, that, after the horrible threats so often denounced by you, you will again be let loose upon a career of crime and blood?”

“None of your cant, de Haldimar, as I once observed to you before,” coolly retorted Wacousta, with bitter sarcasm.  “Consult your own heart, and ask if its catalogue of crime be not far greater than my own:  yet I ask not my life.  I would but have the manner of my fate altered, and fain would die the death of the soldier I was before you rendered me the wretch I am.  Methinks the boon is not so great, if the restoration of your son be the price.”

“Do you mean, then,” eagerly returned the governor, “that if the mere mode of your death be changed, my son shall be restored?”

“I do,” was the calm reply.

“What pledge have we of the fact?  What faith can we repose in the word of a fiend, whose brutal vengeance has already sacrificed the gentlest life that ever animated human clay?” Here the emotion of the governor almost choked, his utterance, and considerable agitation and murmuring were manifested in the ranks.

“Gentle, said you?” replied the prisoner, musingly; “then did he resemble his mother, whom I loved, even as his brother resembles you whom I have had so much reason to hate.  Had I known the boy to be what you describe, I might have felt some touch of pity even while I delayed not to strike his death blow; but the false moonlight deceived me, and the detested name of De Haldimar, pronounced by the lips of my nephew’s wife—­that wife whom your cold-blooded severity had widowed and driven mad—­was in itself sufficient to ensure his doom.”

“Inhuman ruffian!” exclaimed the governor, with increasing indignation; “to the point.  What pledge have you to offer that my son will be restored?”

“Nay, the pledge is easily given, and without much risk.  You have only to defer my death until your messenger return from his interview with Ponteac.  If Captain de Haldimar accompany him back, shoot me as I have requested; if he come not, then it is but to hang me after all.”

“Ha!  I understand you; this is but a pretext to gain time, a device to enable your subtle brain to plan some mode of escape.”

“As you will, Colonel de Haldimar,” calmly retorted Wacousta; and again he sank into silence, with the air of one utterly indifferent to results.