“I’d cut across to the Richelieu River from here,” Lewis Vincent said. “I’d let him go on to Quebec without me. To go to Quebec is a waste of time. He must come back again to Lake Champlain in order to fight, mustn’t he? I’d let him waste his time; and while he wasted it, I’d join those who needed my help! I’d go straight across to the Richelieu, and arrive at the front of Burgoyne’s army weeks ahead of Langlade! Then I’d ask the white chief Burgoyne which was the old woman: Langlade or me.”

“How!” Sponge-belly said. “How! How!”

“Hi-yi!” Doc Means cried. “Let Old Woman Langlade go to Quebec! Let’s us get back to the war!”

Verrieul spoke indulgently to Lewis Vincent. “No doubt you’d do great things; but if you were traveling in a North canoe, as we are, you could never carry it across to the Richelieu from here. That’s certain! It would be too big; and the carries are long.”

“Am I a fool?” Lewis Vincent asked. “Do I know nothing? I’d give my North canoe to my friends in Caughnawaga, and in return they’d give me one of the canoes they keep laid up, away yonder on the Richelieu. Then all I would have to do would be to walk across country to the Richelieu, find the Caughnawaga canoe, get into it and paddle away.”

Verrieul turned to Mr. Tarbull. “Is it true, what my brother Lewis Vincent says? Do the Caughnawagas have canoes laid up on the Richelieu?”

Mr. Tarbull nodded. “Yes: on the Rivière La Colle. It enters the Richelieu near Isle aux Tětes, halfway between Isle aux Noix and the northern end of Lake Champlain.” Looking benevolently at Sponge-belly, he added: “Our brothers from the west are welcome to one of the canoes at Rivière La Colle. Our brothers have been wronged, and it is our duty to help right that wrong.”

Both Lewis Vincent and John Phillips were determined to guide us to the laid-up canoe on Rivière La Colle, and they had words about it.

Verrieul spoke confidentially with Sponge-belly. “Each one wishes to go across country to the Richelieu and then in the canoe with us to join Burgoyne, so to see Langlade’s face when he finds you have been among the British for days, receiving the rum and presents which he expects to receive. They wish you to say which one shall be permitted to go.”

“Langlade’s face will be worth seeing,” Shabonock said darkly. “They shall both go!”

How right Cap had been, after his rum-stealing expedition to Isle aux Noix, in saying that Verrieul had such an innocent face that anyone would believe anything he said!

And how right I had been to say, the day Verrieul joined us, that none of us could dream how useful he was to be!