Who could have thought that I should be defeated with the sword by a boy from the woods of Kaintock ?" The Spaniard frowned and narrowed his cruel blue eyes.

Braxton Wyatt murmured some words of sympathy, but in his heart he was not sorry because of the incident.

He thought that Alvarez at times had patronized him too much, had assumed too lofty an air, and he was willing to see him suffer mortification.

Moreover, he could use the hurt pride of Alvarez as an additional incitement against the five whom he hated.
"You told me once," said Alvarez "that the three comrades of the two, the three whom we have not captured, are much to be dreaded, and we have had proof of it ?" "It is so." "But what can they do now ?" "But little," answered the renegade.

"It was farther north in the great wilderness, where they are so much at home, that they could do us harm.
Here within the fringe of the French and Spanish settlements, they will be hampered too much." "Yes, I should think so," said Alvarez thoughtfully.