From one detail of the medicine-men's costumes to another, from one mesmeric swing of arm and body to the next went Doby's glance in vague alarm. Last of all, he viewed the sizzling rock. A sacrificial cannibal rock! Not all the poniards of the realm could have helped Doby to self-control. He swooned upon the turf. Bending to raise the boy, Francis Vigo brought his own face into a patch of moonlight. His captor recognized him. For what Indian did not know Francis Vigo? Vigo caught the expression of friendliness, and with an imperious gesture signified that they must be taken from this spot. It was daytime when Doby again opened his eyes. He was between the voyageurs under the fallen tree near the canoes. On the river bank sat the old Indians. Francis Vigo, jaunty in velvet, cap, plume, and sword, was smoking the calumet. One voyageur whispered to Doby, "Indians want to burn Vincennes." The other murmured, "Père François tries to prevent that." The first again: "They mean to join with renegades and capture the fort. Renegades get Government money. Indians get fire-water." Doby whispered back, "Has he told them that he took the money and the papers worth money to Fort Wayne?" Both nodded. "Do they know he has had the fire-water moved away?" They nodded again. "Will they believe what he tells them?" Emphatic bobs of both heads. With the point of his sword Francis Vigo was drawing a map on the alluvial mud of the inlet. The Indians bent over it. The voyageurs exchanged dismayed glances. Even before he saw the map it was not hard to guess, that the "merchant of Saint Louis," knowing how to turn greed into profit, had bought the lives of his three followers and had purchased the safety of his home town with the one thing he had to sell--the newly found fur tract. "They agree to take the beaver dam," was the meaning of one voyageur's sigh. "They go to it instead of to Vincennes," was the translation of the other's shrug. Doby thought, "To their old bones, the certainty of furs to bring fire-water is better than the risk of a clash with the whites, who always defeat them." So the hunched, misshapen, and degraded old savages, each with his attendant youth, embarked upon the now quiet river and paddled out of sight of the alien race who loathed them. The dominant Vigo, who had lazily watched them depart, now dropped his assumed calm as suddenly as he did the velvet coat. "Home!" he commanded. "To warn the fort!" As they hurried along, he declared: "The renegades must be captured and defeated. They are wicked men." "The Indians are dreadfully wicked," shuddered Doby.