“Not at least before I have sent a bullet, to ascertain the true quality of your skins,” said Grantham, levelling his pistol.

“Sure-Ly,” said Desborough, as he turned and drew himself to the full height of his bony and muscular figure, while his eye measured the officer from head to foot, with a look of concentrated but suppressed fury, “you wouldn’t dare to do this—­you wouldn’t dare to fire into my canoe—­ besides, consider,” he said, in a tone somewhat deprecating, “your bullet may go through her, and you would hardly do a fellor the injury to make him lose the chance of a good cargo.”

“Then why provoke such a disaster, by refusing to show us what is beneath those blankets?”

“Because it’s my pleasure to do so,” fiercely retorted the other, “and I won’t show them to no man.”

“Then is it my pleasure to fire,” said Grantham.  “The injury be on your own head, Desborough—­one—­two—.”

At that moment the sail was violently agitated—­something struggling for freedom, cast the blankets on one side, and presently the figure of a man stood upright in the bows of the canoe, and gazed around him with an air of stupid astonishment.

“What,” exclaimed Middlemore, retreating back a pace or two, in unfeigned surprise; “has that pistol started up, like the ghost in Hamlet, Ensign Paul, Emilius, Theophilus, Arnoldi, of the United States Michigan Militia—­a prisoner on his parole of honor? and yet attempting a clandestine departure from the country—­how is this?”

“Not this merely,” exclaimed Grantham, “but a traitor to his country, and a deserter from our service.  This fellow,” he pursued, in answer to an inquiring look of his companion, “is a scoundrel, who deserted three years since from the regiment you relieved—­I recognized him yesterday on his landing, as my brother Gerald, who proposed making his report to the General this morning, had done before.  Let us secure both, Middlemore, for, thank Heaven we have been enabled to detect the traitor at last, in that which will excuse his final expulsion from the soil, even if no worse befall him.  I have only tampered with him thus long to render his conviction more complete.”

“Secure me! secure Jeremiah Desborough?” exclaimed the settler, with rage manifest in the clenching of his teeth and the tension of every muscle of his iron frame, “and that for jist tryin’ to save a countryman—­well, we’ll see who’ll have the best of it.”

Before Grantham could anticipate the movement, the active and powerful Desborough had closed with him in a manner to prevent his making use of his pistol, had he even so desired.  In the next instant it was wrested from him, and thrown far from the spot on which he struggled with his adversary, but at fearful odds, against himself.  Henry Grantham, although well and actively made, was of slight proportion, and yet in boyhood.  Desborough, on the contrary, was in the full force of a vigorous manhood.