Then, indeed, the truth clapped me in the face, and I could have laughed aloud to think what a puppet I had been, just when I was comforting my vanity with my own shrewdness. Of course, Pemaou would spare me, and so prolong the game. As the son of the leader of the Hurons, he had more to learn from Longuant's speech than I. We were playing with the same cards, but his stakes were the larger. I suddenly realized that I was enjoying myself more than in a long time. But the test was to come. When Pemaou had heard all he wished, he would aim the spear at my throat, and so, though I threw negligently, I watched like a starved cat. I heard the council agree upon a decisive measure, and I knew that the Huron's moment had arrived. He seized it. His spear whistled at me like a bullet, but my muscles were braced and waiting. I caught the weapon, and held it, though the wood ate into my palms. The savages told the Huron in a derisive roar that the Frenchman was the better man. And now it was my turn. So far I had thrown fair, without twist or trickery, but I knew one turn of the wrist that could do cruel work. Should I use it? Pemaou had tried to murder me. I looked at his red-and-white body, and reptile eyes, and hate rushed to my brain like liquor. I took the spear and snapped it. "Take your plaything!" I cried, and I tossed the fragments in his face. "Learn to use it if you care for a whole skin, for I promise you that we shall meet again." And turning my back on him, I strode out of the Ottawa camp the richer by some information, and one foe. CHAPTER V A DECISION I found Cadillac in his private room at the fort, and said to myself that he looked like a man stripped for running. Not that his apparel had altered since I had met him swaggering upon the beach the day before, but his bearing had changed. He had dropped superfluities, and was hardened and sinewed for action. I expected him to rate me for my tardiness in reporting my interview with the Englishman, but, instead, he greeted me with so much eagerness that I saw that some of my news must have run before. "What do you know?" I cried. He looked at the crowd swarming outside the window. "That we are in a hornets' nest," he said, with a wry smile. "But never mind that now. We must talk rapidly. I have been waiting for you. I could not act till I learned what you had done." I bowed my regrets. "I was delayed. I saw the Englishman, and"---- He cut me short. "Never mind the Englishman," he cried, with a wave of his impatient hand. "Tell me of the Ottawa camp. You have been there an hour. I hear that you danced where they danced, and shared dog-meat and jest alike. In faith, Montlivet, I have a good will to keep you here in irons if I can do it in no gentler way. But what did Longuant say at the council fire?"