There was a general smile at this. "But you did not see it?" "I hear some shooting." "But you did not see who did the shooting?" "Aw, no; but she said--" "That will do, thank you," she said sweetly, and the man retired. The prosecution consulted its notes. "Pierre La Flitche!" was called out. A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped forward to the open space before the table. He was darkly handsome, with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere. It rested for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it seemed as though they had met of old time. He smiled pleasantly back, the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth, immaculately white. In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was that of his father's, a descendant of the _coureurs du bois_. His mother--with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth--was a _breed_. He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he did not know where. Ah, _oui_, men called him an old-timer. He had come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the Rockies from the Great Slave. On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure. "In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door," he began, his words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of the accents his forbears put into the tongue. "And so I sleep last night. But I sleep like the cat. The fall of the leaf, the breath of the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night long. So, the first shot," with a quick snap of the fingers, "and I am awake, just like that, and I am at the door." St. Vincent leaned forward to Frona. "It was not the first shot." She nodded, with her eyes still bent on La Flitche, who gallantly waited. "Then two more shot," he went on, "quick, together, boom-boom, just like that. 'Borg's shack,' I say to myself, and run down the trail. I think Borg kill Bella, which was bad. Bella very fine girl," he confided with one of his irresistible smiles. "I like Bella. So I run. And John he run from his cabin like a fat cow, with great noise. 'What the matter?' he say; and I say, 'I don't know.' And then something come, wheugh! out of the dark, just like that, and knock John down, and knock me down. We grab everywhere all at once. It is a man. He is in undress. He fight. He cry, 'Oh! Oh! Oh!' just like that. We hold him tight, and bime-by pretty quick, he stop. Then we get up, and I say, 'Come along back.'" "Who was the man?" La Flitche turned partly, and rested his eyes on St. Vincent. "Go on." "So? The man he will not go back; but John and I say yes, and he go." "Did he say anything?"