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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Talking of Captain Leclere, has not Dantes given you a letter from him?" "To me? no was there one?" "I believe that, besides the packet, Captain Leclere confided a letter to his care." "Of what packet are you speaking, Danglars?" "Why, that which Dantes left at Porto-Ferrajo." "How do you know he had a packet to leave at Porto-Ferrajo?" Danglars turned very red.
And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Leclere bought Batard and gave him his shameful name. And for five years the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael's and the Yukon delta to the head-reaches of the Pelly and even so far as the Peace River, Athabasca, and the Great Slave.
For jealousy that vine with flying seeds and strangling creepers had taken root in the heart of Prosper Leclère. Yes, I know it is contrary to all the rules and to all the proverbs, but so it happened. It is not true that the strongest love is the most jealous. It is the lesser love, the love which receives more than it gives, that lies open to the floating germs of mistrust and suspicion.
"SACREDAM," the Frenchman said softly, flirting the quick blood from his bitten hand and gazing down on the little puppy choking and gasping in the snow. Leclere turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the Sixty Mile Post. "Dat fo' w'at Ah lak heem. 'Ow moch, eh, you, M'sieu'? 'Ow moch? Ah buy heem, now; Ah buy heem queek."
He would have given his Sunrise claim to be assured that the dog was not awake, and once, when one of his joints cracked, he looked quickly and guiltily at Batard to see if he roused. He did not rouse then but a few minutes later he got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and looked carefully about him. "Sacredam," said Leclere under his breath.
From that shore two rifle- shots rang out. Timothy Brown pitched out of the boat and went down bubbling red, and that was the last of Timothy Brown. He, Leclere, pitched into the bottom of the boat with a stinging shoulder. He lay very quiet, peeping at the shore. After a time two Indians stuck up their heads and came out to the water's edge, carrying between them a birch-bark canoe.
"Some day you'll kill him and be out his price," said John Hamlin once, when Batard lay panting in the snow where Leclere had kicked him, and no one knew whether his ribs were broken, and no one dared look to see. "Dat," said Leclere, dryly, "dat is my biz'ness, M'sieu'." And the men marvelled that Batard did not run away. They did not understand. But Leclere understood.
Much of evil and much of strength were there in these, Batard's progenitors, and, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh, he had inherited it all. And then came Black Leclere, to lay his heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy life, to press and prod and mould till it became a big bristling beast, acute in knavery, overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical.
"In the meantime meditate on your sins and the ways of Providence. It will do you good, so be grateful." As is the way with men who are accustomed to great hazards, whose nerves are healthy and trained in patience, so it was with Leclere who settled himself to the long wait which is to say that he reconciled his mind to it.
Batard, with a single leap, sideways, landed around the corner of the cabin out of sight. "Bless me!" he repeated at intervals. Leclere grinned proudly. "But why does he not run away?" The Frenchman's shoulders went up in the racial shrug that means all things from total ignorance to infinite understanding. "Then why do you not kill him?" Again the shoulders went up.
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