tight against his mouth.

"Be still! Be still!" I spluttered wildly, and I threw a disordered
glance at the horizon, and at my astonished crew. I had not meant that
the men, except Pierre, should be taken into the secret until we were
well afloat. Here was another contretemps.

"Are you mad, Father Carheil!" I began, with a sorry show of dignity,
while my palm stuck like a leech against his lips. "This is not"----

"Not any one but the prisoner himself," interrupted the Englishman's
voice. He dropped his blanket, and sprang to the sand. "Do not lie
for me, monsieur," he went on in his indolent, drawling French that
already had come to have a pleasant quaintness in my ears. "Monsieur,
let me speak to the father."

If Nature had given me a third hand, I should have used it to throttle
the Englishman. "Get back in the canoe!" I stormed.

He motioned me away. Standing slim and tall in Singing Arrow's dress,
he put me--such creatures of outward seeming are we--absurdly in the
wrong, as if I had been rude to a woman.

"Father Carheil," he began, "your ears at least are not fettered.
Listen, if you will. This man is not to blame. I was thrown in his
way, and he took me from pity, to save my life. Now that I am
discovered, I will go back to prison with you. Let this man go west.
Whatever his business, it is pressing."

With two mad men on my hands, I had to choose between them. I dropped