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"Gentlemen," he said speaking in precise English, "a charge was made in this chamber some days since, a charge involving the integrity and loyalty of a high officer in the service of Spain, Don Francisco Alvarez. This charge was made by five men and youths from the new region called by themselves Kentucky and known here as Kaintock, but they brought little proof to support it."
Alvarez exclaimed, and then he paled at sight of the priest. The Spaniard was a bold man, but he wished no conflict with Holy Church. "I said 'stop," replied the priest with calm dignity, advancing into the room. "Francisco Alvarez, you were about to perform a deed unworthy of yourself, one that you would have cause to regret. There is no war between Louisiana and Kaintock.
"Unlock the door, Luiz," he said. "This is a strong prison and a close one. I've no doubt our gallants from Kaintock, where there is much room, will be glad to be outside again." Luiz inserted the huge iron key, turned it in the lock, and threw wide the door. Alvarez looked in, and then uttered a cry so charged with rage that even Braxton Wyatt was startled.
When the man reached the edge of the forest next to the Chateau of Beaulieu, he paused for a long time, standing in the shadow of the trees. Always he looked fixedly at a single building, the log hut, in which Alvarez held his four prisoners from Kaintock.
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.
Lieutenant Diégo Bernal laughed and daintily stroked his little mustache. "I understand you and you have my sympathy," he said. "We Catalans are at heart republicans, and I am interested in this new place of yours that you call Kaintock. But you will have to endure this fort a while longer. The good Señor Pollock does not make progress. He cannot produce the proof of what you charge.
It was claimed in the beginning by France, and justly, but a great war gave it by might though not by right to England. Now Spain has succeeded to France. Here, throughout all this vast region, there is none to dispute her title. To the east of the Mississippi great changes are going on, and it may be that Kaintock, also, will revert to my master, the king."
Oliver Pollock, too, gave him a warning glance. Yet the triumphant looks of the Spanish captain and the renegade were hard to bear. "On the other hand," continued the Governor General, still weighing his words, "the actions of Don Francisco have not been beyond rebuke. He seems to have regarded those from Kaintock as the prisoners of himself and not of Spain.
"Ha, thou Kaintock!" exclaimed Menocal, "thou art the taller and the larger, but I am the stronger, as I shall quickly prove!" The size of Henry acted as an irritant upon Menocal, already flushed with intoxicants, and he seized the youth by the waist in an attempt to hurl him to the floor and thus prove his superior strength.
"It is better than I thought," he said to Braxton Wyatt. "The ring serves the purpose well. We shall have some royal sport If Kaintock will but fight." "He will fight," said Braxton Wyatt. The swordsman advanced upon Paul and thrust with his shining blade. Paul felt intuitively that he was a master of the weapon, reinforced, too, by enormous strength. He, a boy, would have but little chance.
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