skirmish between the looters on one side, and the French and the English
soldiers on the other. The Morrises firmly believed that Jean Bevoir was
dead, but such was not a fact. A wound thought to be fatal had taken a turn
for the better, and the fellow was now lying in a French farmhouse on the
St. Lawrence, where two or three of his old companions in crime were doing
their best to nurse him back to health and strength. Jean Bevoir had not
forgotten the Morrises, nor what they had done to drag him down, as he
expressed it, and, although the war was at an end, he was determined to
make Dave, Henry, and the others pay dearly for the ruin they had brought
to his plans in the past.

"I shall show them that, though France is beaten, Jean Bevoir still lives,"
he told himself boastingly. "The trading-post on the Kinotah with its
beautiful lands, shall still be mine--the Morrises shall never possess it!"
Sometimes he spoke to his companions of these things, but they merely
smiled at him, thinking that what he had in mind to do would prove
impossible of accomplishment.




CHAPTER II

THE CABIN IN THE CLEARING


It was already four o'clock and the short winter day was drawing to a
close. On every side of the two young hunters arose the almost trackless
woods, with here and there a small opening, where the wind had swept the
rocks clear of snow. Not a sound broke the stillness.