immediately after this, to see about buying a ranch with my old chum at
Trinity, Polly Cliffshawe--Polydore, you know. Whom should I meet in a
hut on the ranch but Jacques's friend, Pretty Pierre. This was luck; but
he was not like Jacques Pontiac, he was secretive as a Buddhist deity.
He had a good many of the characteristics that go to a fashionable
diplomatist: clever, wicked, cool, and in speech doing the vanishing
trick just when you wanted him. But my star of fortune was with me. One
day Silverbottle, an Indian, being in a murderous humour, put a bullet in
Pretty Pierre's leg, and would have added another, only I stopped it
suddenly. While in his bed he told me what he knew of the Malbroucks.

"This is the fashion of it. John and Audrey Malbrouck had come to Quebec
in the year 1865, and sojourned in the parish of St. Genevieve, in the
house of the mother of Pretty Pierre. Of an inquiring turn of mind, the
French half-breed desired to know concerning the history of these English
people, who, being poor, were yet gentle, and spoke French with a grace
and accent which was to the French-Canadian patois as Shakespeare's
English is to that of Seven Dials. Pierre's methods of inquisitiveness
were not strictly dishonest. He did not open letters, he did not besiege
dispatch-boxes, he did not ask impudent questions; he watched and
listened. In his own way he found out that the man had been a soldier in
the ranks, and that he had served in India. They were most attached to
the child, whose name was Marguerite. One day a visitor, a lady, came to
them. She seemed to be the cause of much unhappiness to Mrs. Malbrouck.
And Pierre was alert enough to discover that this distinguished-looking
person desired to take the child away with her. To this the young mother
would not consent, and the visitor departed with some chillingly-polite
phrases, part English, part French, beyond the exact comprehension of
Pierre, and leaving the father and mother and little Marguerite happy.
Then, however, these people seemed to become suddenly poorer, and