"Yes, it is indeed grateful to the tired body and limbs. I could feel a complete sense of rest and victory, if it were not for the sting of the wound that boy gave me. Who could have thought that I should be defeated with the sword by a boy from the woods of Kaintock?" The Spaniard frowned and narrowed his cruel blue eyes. Braxton Wyatt murmured some words of sympathy, but in his heart he was not sorry because of the incident. He thought that Alvarez at times had patronized him too much, had assumed too lofty an air, and he was willing to see him suffer mortification. Moreover, he could use the hurt pride of Alvarez as an additional incitement against the five whom he hated. "You told me once," said Alvarez "that the three comrades of the two, the three whom we have not captured, are much to be dreaded, and we have had proof of it?" "It is so." "But what can they do now?" "But little," answered the renegade. "It was farther north in the great wilderness, where they are so much at home, that they could do us harm. Here within the fringe of the French and Spanish settlements, they will be hampered too much." "Yes, I should think so," said Alvarez thoughtfully. "As you perhaps surmise, I am going to stay here indefinitely, Wyatt. This place of mine, Beaulieu, I call it, is at a suitable distance from New Orleans and I am an absolute monarch while I remain. Here, on the border, I am as a military commander, practically lord of life and death, and on one excuse or another I can hold the troops as long as I please." "Which seems to me to be very convenient for all our plans," said Braxton Wyatt. The Spaniard smiled, but speedily contracted his brows again. The cut that Paul had given him was hurting. "I should like to punish that boy in some spectacular manner," he said. "I should want him to be humiliated in the presence of others as I was." Suddenly he raised his head, which he had bent in thought, and his lips curled in laughter under his yellow mustache. "I have it!" he exclaimed. "An idea! Since young Kaintock can use the sword I shall give him a chance to do it again! Oh, I shall give him every opportunity!" Then he leaned over and spoke in lower tones to Braxton Wyatt. The renegade's eyes lighted up with delight. "The very thing!" he exclaimed. "I'd have it done at once!" Paul and Long Jim Hart meanwhile were resting in their log prison. Jim's arms had been unbound and, after rubbing them freely, he said that the circulation was restored. Then the two turned their attention to their prison. Paul surmised that it had been built as a tool house or store house, but at present it was empty save for himself and his comrade, Long Jim. The only light came from two little windows made merely by cutting out a section of log and quite too small to admit a human body. They tried the door but it was so strong that they could not shake it. Then Long Jim lay calmly down on the floor.