row at the end of long ropes in the square at Regina
until you are dead, dead, dead! Think of it, Lagrange,
what a great big ugly bloated corpse you'll make hanging
by the neck after your toes have stopped twitching,
twitching, and your face is a beautiful blue. Eh? _Bien!_
is not that so, blockhead?"

And the dwarf grinned and chuckled in such a bloodthirsty
and anticipating fashion that the girl shuddered.

Bastien Lagrange did not seem to relish the prospect,
and his shifty eyes roamed round the walls.

"But the red-coats, how can they come?" he weakly asked.
"Where are they, the soldiers of the Great Mother? Riel
has said that those stories of the cities over seas and
the many red-coats are all lies, and that the Lord will
smite the Police and those that are in the country with
the anthrax that kills the cattle in the spring. Riel
swears to that, for St. Peter appeared to him and told
him so. He said so himself!"

"Bah, idiot!" retorted Pepin, "if it is that Riel is on
such friendly terms with St. Peter, and the Lord is going
to do such wonderful things for him, why does not the
Saint give his messengers enough in advance for them to
pay the poor men who make for them the moccasins they
wear? Why does he suffer them to steal from their own
people? Pshaw, it is the same old tale, the same old game
from all time, from Mahomet to the present down-at-heel!