Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/201

 *voluntarily Trafford kept his eye on Pierre's huge form, where it was stretched in the full blaze and warmth of the logs, his eyes closed in a pleasant after-feeding doze. Suddenly out of the dark came a sharp Canadian voice, calling:

"Sacré, c'est moi, Pierre!"

Every one glanced up enquiringly, but the effect on Pierre Duchesney was startling in the extreme. His eyes stared wide from a face of ashy grey; he leaped to his feet, shaking as one with the ague. Trafford had sprung to his side at the instant of his leap from his recumbent position, and in time to catch from his blanched lips the convicting words:

"Mon dieu; Victor!"

Trafford's hand was on his pistol, which he drew, with the sharp demand:

"Quick, seize the man; he's wanted for the murder of Victor Vignon!"

At the word "murder," the men drew back from the circle of light. They lived free and easy lives in the woods, and had little of the fear of the law before them in their fastnesses, but with murder and the murderer they had no share. All the other laws