quarters presently, we are not so naked as we might be. Here's your two pistols, my good whinger, and Tamin's fishy dirk. And Tamin's gaff here will make a pretty lance. It is borne in upon me that some of the good Abbé's lambs will bleat for their shepherd before this night's work be done!"

There was a steady light in his eyes that rejoiced me much, and his voice rose and fell as if fain to break into a war song; and I said to myself, "The boy is a fighter, and the fire is in his blood, for all his scholar's prating of peace!" Yet he straightway turned his back upon the enemy and with great indifference went to filling his pipe.

"Ay, an' there be a right good gun in the cuddy!" grunted Tamin, after a second or two of silence.

"The saints be praised!" said I. And Marc's long arm reached in to capture it. It was a huge weapon, and my heart beat high at sight of it. Marc caressed it for an instant, then reluctantly passed it to me, with the powder-horn.

"I can shoot, a little, myself," said he, "but I would be presumptuous to boast when you were by, Father!"

"Ay, vraiment," said Tamin, sharply; "don't think you can shoot with the Sieur de Briart yet!"

"I don't," replied Marc, simply, as he handed me out a pouch of bullets and a pouch of slugs.

The pursuing canoes were by this come within fair range. There came a strident hail from the foremost:—

"Lay to, or we shoot!"

"Shoot, dogs!" I shouted, ramming home the good measure of powder which I had poured into my hand. I followed it with a fair charge of slugs, and was wadding it loosely, when—

"Duck!" cries Tamin, bobbing his head lower than the tiller.

Neither Marc nor I moved a hair. But we gazed at the canoes. On the instant two red flames blazed out, with a redoubled bang; and one bullet went through the sail a little above my head.

"Not bad!" said Marc, glancing tranquilly at the bullet hole.

But for my own part, I was angry. To be fired upon thus, at a priest's orders, by a pack of scurvy savages in the pay of our own party,—never before had Jean de Briart been put to such indignity. I kneeled, and took a very cautious aim,—not, however, at the savages, but at the bow of the nearest canoe.

Tamin's big gun clapped like a cannon, and kicked my shoulder very vilely. But the result of the shot was all that we could desire. As I made haste to load again I noticed that the savage in the bow had fallen backward in his place, hit by a stray slug. The bulk of the charge, however, had torn a great hole in the bark, close to the water-line.