Alvarez looked down at them and the sight of the two caused him a mixture of anger and triumph. His wound still stung, but at the bottom of his heart was a feeling that he had deserved it. In the presence of his own retainers, and with all the circumstances in his favor, he had sought to humiliate a boy. But this faint feeling was not enough to induce corresponding action. He was also something of a statesman, and he saw the power behind these two who had come out of the woods. They were foresters, they wore the tanned skin of the deer, but they belonged to the soil; they were natives, while he, in all his brilliant uniform and gold lace, was a foreigner, merely the long, extended arm of a power four thousand miles away. The two were but a vanguard, others would come and yet others in a volume, always increasing. The only possibility of saving Louisiana was to cut off the stream at the fountain head, while it was yet a thin and trickling rill, and he, Francisco Alvarez, was the man for the deed. It was because such thoughts as these were passing through his head that he did not speak for at least a minute, but stood steadily regarding Paul and Long Jim. He knew instinctively that it was Paul to whom he must speak, the boy with the thoughtful, dreamy eye, who, like himself, would gaze far into the future. "Where are your comrades?" he asked, "the other three who helped you to steal my boat?" "Captured it, you mean," replied Paul, calmly. "So long as you use the words 'steal' and 'thief,' you can talk to the air. I've nothing to say." "Nor me either, Paul," said Long Jim, "I can't remember another time in my life when I felt so little like talkin'." Long Jim leaned his head against the wall and half closed his eyes. His manner expressed the utmost indifference. Alvarez frowned, but he remembered that they were wholly in his power and he had plans. "I'll change the words," he said, "but I repeat the question. Where are your comrades?" "I don't know," replied Paul, and feeling a sudden happy thrill of defiance he added: "They are probably somewhere arranging the details of our rescue." Alvarez frowned again. "That is impossible," he said. "Perhaps you do not know your position. You are not at New Orleans. Here I am both the civil and military chief and this is my own place. I can put you to death as brigands or guerillas, caught red-handed upon Spanish soil." "Both charges, you know, are false," said Paul, "you know, too, that we have come to defeat, if we can, a conspiracy between you and Braxton Wyatt, a renegade whose life is doubly forfeit to his people. He carries plans, maps, and full information of our settlements in Kentucky, and he expects that you will go with many soldiers and cannon to help him and the tribes destroy us. What plans you and he have beyond this I do not know, but these, my friends and I hope to defeat, and we feel we could not be engaged in a greater or holier task."