A reluctant buzz of admiration ran through the crowd. Many of them had come from Paris, but they had never seen such swordsmanship before. Whoever the hunter might be they saw that he was the master swordsman of them all. They addressed low cries of warning to Boucher: "Have a care!" "Have a care!" "Save your strength!" they said. But de Galisonniere stood, tight-lipped and silent. Nor did Robert and Tayoga feel the need of saying anything to their champion. Now Boucher felt for the first time in his life that he had met the better man. The great duelist who had ruffled it so grandly through the inns and streets of Paris looked with growing terror into the stern, accusing eyes that confronted him. But he did not always see Willet. It was the ghosts of the boy, Gaston Lafitte, of the sick man Raoul de Bassempierre and of the indifferent swordsman, Raymond de Neville, that guided the hunter's blade, and his forehead became cold and wet with perspiration. De Galisonniere had moved in the crowd, until he stood with Robert and Tayoga. He was perhaps the only one of the _honnetes gens_ in the garden, and while he was a Frenchman, first, last and all the time, he knew who Boucher was and what he represented, he understood the reason why Robert had been drawn into the garden and he was willing to see the punishment of the man who was to have been the sanguinary instrument of the plot. "A miracle will defeat the best of plans," he said to de Courcelles. "What do you mean, de Galisonniere?" asked de Courcelles with a show of effrontery. "That an unknown hunter should prove himself a better swordsman than your great duelist and bravo, Boucher." "Why do you call him my duelist and bravo, de Galisonniere?" "I understand that you brought young Lennox into the garden, apparently his warm friend on the way, and then when he was here, stood aside." "You must answer for such insinuations, Captain de Galisonniere." "But not to you, my friend. My sword will be needed in the coming war, and I'm not called upon to dull it now against one who was a principal in a murderous conspiracy. I may be over particular about those with whom I fight, de Courcelles, but I am what I am." "You mean you will not fight me?" "Certainly not. A meeting would cause the reasons for it to be threshed out, and we are not so many here in Canada that those reasons would not become known to all, and you, I fancy, would not relish the spread of such knowledge. The Intendant is a powerful man, but the Marquis Duquesne is the head of our military life, and he would not be pleased to hear what one of his officers so high in rank has done here tonight."