between the logs, and this smashed a bowl that stood on
the dresser within two feet of Dorothy's head. She merely
glanced at it casually, and picking up the basket of
cartridges, prepared to hand them round. With fingers
keen and warming to their work, the defenders emptied
the contents of their magazines into the astonished
half-breeds and Indians. It was more than the latter had
bargained for. They made for an open shed that stood hard
by, leaving their dead and wounded in the snow.

"What ho! Johnnie Crapaud, you pig!" cried Rory, withdrawing
his rifle from the loophole, and applying his mouth to
it instead. "It's the Red River jig I've bin dyin' to
tache ye for many a long day."

At the same moment Jacques caught sight of his old _bete
noire_, Leopold St. Croix the elder, and, not to be
outdone by his friend Rory in the exchange of seasonable
civilities with the enemy--although, when he came to
think of it afterwards, he might as well have shot his
man--he was applying his mouth to, his loophole to shout
something in the same vein when the quick-eyed Leopold
fired a shot at the spot from which the gun-barrel had
just been withdrawn. So lucky or good was his aim that
he struck the mud in the immediate neighbourhood of the
hole, and sent the _debris_ flying into the
French-Canadian's mouth. Jacques spent the rest of his
time when in the house watching for a long-haired half-breed
with a red sash round his waist, who answered to the name
of St. Croix the elder.