"To make you listen." Raoul's voice was deep and strong, and it resounded powerfully against the beamed ceiling and stone walls of the great hall. But in its tones Pierre heard the screams of that hysterical boy whose tantrums and nightmares, after they'd finally succeeded in ransoming him from the Potawatomi, had wrenched the hearts of the whole household and renewed their grief over the loss of Helene. But now that painfully thin, frightened child was a broad-shouldered man over six feet tall with a knife as big as a broadsword and a pistol strapped to his waist. A very dangerous man. A man who, they said, had killed half a dozen or more opponents in fights up and down the Mississippi. "We have been listening," Elysee said. "Pierre hasn't," Raoul said resentfully. "_You_ tell him, Papa. Tell him he'd better leave his damned squaw in the woods where she belongs." _Damned squaw._ The words pierced Pierre's chest like arrows. Elysee sat back down in his wing chair and stroked his jaw. He looked like an old turkey cock, with fierce eyes, a hooked nose and a long, wrinkled neck. The leather-bound copy of Montaigne's essays that had been lying in his lap had slipped to the floor to join newspapers piled around his feet like autumn leaves, a mixture of local papers like Frank Hopkins's _Victor Visitor_, and the Galena _Miners Journal_, months-old papers from the East--the _New York Evening Post_, the _Boston Evening Transcript_, the _National Intelligencer_ from Washington City, the even older copies of _Mercure de France_ from Paris. "Come here, both of you," Elysee sighed. Hoping his father could reconcile them where he had failed so dismally, Pierre went to stand before Elysee's chair. After a moment's hesitation Raoul approached too. But Pierre saw that he was pointedly keeping more than an arm's-length distance between the two of them. Elysee said, "That's better. I can't see you when you stand far from me. These eyes are good for very little but reading, and when I can no longer read, I will shoot myself. And if I cannot see well enough to load the pistol, one of you must do it for me." As he often did, Elysee was attempting to use humor to put out the fire. Pierre glanced at Raoul to see if their father had drawn a smile from him. But Raoul stood with arms folded across his chest, his mouth hidden under his black mustache, his eyes narrowed. Except when he smiled--and today he was far from any smiling--the mustache made him look perpetually angry. "Raoul," Elysee said. "Be assured that we are listening to you. Tell us what has driven you to destroy one of our family treasures." "Just because Pierre soiled himself with a squaw," Raoul demanded, "do we have to live with what came of it?" Pierre felt his face burn. He wanted to slap Raoul. _My life with Sun Woman was as honorable as my life with Marie-Blanche._