Fantine answered. “But, yes, monsieur,” she said. “We have friends at Malden that send us word. I know not then why he come, but now it is very clear. He want to marry the Lady Estelle and get her property to pay his debts. Ah! Le scelerat!” “You seem to know him?” Jack was curious. “Non, monsieur. I know him not. But I know of him. And I know his house. M. Delaroche has hated it always.” “He warned Tecumseh against him before he died, and when Brito turned up and asked for Miss Estelle, as he did two or three months ago, Tecumseh put him off and sent a messenger to me asking me to come and take charge of her. I am a member of the Panther clan of the Shawnees, you know; Tecumseh’s mother raised me up a member when I was a boy, ten years ago. Perhaps it was because of Delaroche that she did so. I came on at once but when I got to Girty’s Town I found that the girl had disappeared.” “And you can not find her?” Fantine’s bright eyes were darting from Jack’s face to Alagwa’s and back again. “You have search--and you can not find her?” “Well! I haven’t searched very much!” Jack laughed ruefully. “I haven’t been able.” He went on and told of his adventures with Williams. Fantine listened in seeming amazement, with many exclamations and shrugs of her mighty shoulders. When Jack tried to slur over his picking up of the boy, as being, to his mind, not pertinent to the subject, she broke in and insisted on hearing the tale in full. Alagwa listened with swimming brain. She was sure, sure, that this fiendishly clever French woman had penetrated her sex at a glance and that she had almost as swiftly guessed her identity with the missing girl. Exposure stared her in the face. Her plans rocked and crashed about her. In the last three days Alagwa had come to think her disguise perfect and had built on it in many ways. By it she had hoped to carry out her pledge to Tecumseh. With her detection her mission must fail or, at least, be sharply circumscribed. She had known Jack for three days only, but she was very sure that, once he knew who she was, he would insist on taking her south with him to Alabama. She could not serve Tecumseh in Alabama. Moreover--her heart fluttered at the thought--Jack would no longer treat her with the same frank, free comradeship that had grown so dear to her. She did not know how he would treat her, but she was sure it would be different. And she did not want it to be different. Desperately she sought for some way to ward off the threatened disclosure. The French woman seemed in no haste to speak; perhaps she might be induced to be silent. Alagwa remembered the roll of gold coins that Tecumseh had given her. Perhaps----