He broke off, shot to the bar across the shutters, and betook himself in
silence to the other window, where presently he burst into a fit of
laughter. The sound was harsh even to savagery. "Go your ways,
Saunderson," he said. "I've tried the bars of the cage; they're too
strong. Stop on your morning round, and I'll give account of my trading."

The overseer gone, the windows barred, and the heavy door shut and locked
behind him, MacLean paused upon the doorstep to look down upon his
appointed companion. The trader, half sitting, half reclining upon a log,
was striking at something with the point of his hunting-knife, lightly,
delicately, and often. The something was a lizard, about which, as it lay
in the sunshine upon the log, he had wrought a pen of leafy twigs. The
creature, darting for liberty this way and that, was met at every turn by
the steel, and at every turn suffered a new wound. MacLean looked; then
bent over and with a heavy stick struck the thing out of its pain.

"There's a time to work and a time to play, Hugon," he said coolly.
"Playtime's over now. The sun is high, and Isaac and the oxen must have
the skins well-nigh to Williamsburgh. Up with you!"

Hugon rose to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced in
good enough English that he was ready. He had youth, the slender, hardy,
perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a countenance that
were not of the white and not of the brown. When he went a-trading up the
river, past the thickly settled country, past the falls, past the French
town which his Huguenot father had helped to build, into the deep woods
and to the Indian village whence had strayed his mother, he wore the
clothing that became the woods,--beaded moccasins, fringed leggings,
hunting-shirt of deerskin, cap of fur,--looked his part and played it