Chapter XI. Bigot's Ball - Page 2

woods, although they said smooth words to us when we left them."

"And we don't know what kind of a net they'll try to weave around us," said Willet. "I say again I wish we'd delivered our letters and were out of Quebec."

But Robert could not agree with the hunter and Tayoga. He was still glad of the lucky chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger and more penetrating. Now it rested upon Robert.

"I had a fair opinion of you," he said. "Coming with you in the Frontenac down the river I judged you, despite your weapons and the fact that you belong to another race than mine, a gentle youth and full of the virtues. Now I find that you have been fighting and fighting with intent to kill."

"Hold hard, Father," said Willet in a good-humored tone. "Only half of that is true. Your information is not full. He has been fighting, but not with intent to kill. He held the life of Count Jean de Mezy on the point of his sword, but gave it back to him, such as it was."

The deep eyes of the priest smoldered. Perhaps there was a distant and fiery youth of his own that the morning's deed recalled, but his menacing gaze relaxed.

"If you gave him back his life when you could have taken it, you have done well," he said. "As the hunter intimates, it is a life of little value, perhaps none at all, but you did not on that account have any right to take it. And I say more, that if the misadventure had to happen to any Frenchman here in Quebec I am glad it happened to one of the wicked tribe of Bigot."

"Your man Bigot, powerful though he may be, seems to have plenty of enemies," said the hunter.

"He has many, but not enough, I fear," said the priest gloomily. "He and his horde are a terrible weight upon the shoulders of New France. But I should not talk of these things to you who are our enemies, and who may soon be fighting us."

He quit the subject abruptly, and talked in a desultory manner on irrelevant matters. But Robert saw that Quebec itself and the struggle between the powerful Bigot ring and the honnetes gens was a much greater weight on his mind than the approaching war with the English colonies.

After a stay of a half hour he departed, saying that he was going to visit a parish farther down the river, and might not see them again, but he wished them well. He also bade them once more to beware of Tandakora.

"A good man and a strong one," said Willet,