to the nuns. You would disgrace me as a soldier.”

Barbe lifted her gaze to his face and was diverted from rebellion. Tonty put out his arm to guard her, but a tall stalking brave was pushed against her in passing and immediately startled by the thud of her prompt fist upon his back. The Indian turned, unsheathing his knife.

“Get out of my way, thou ugly big warrior,” said Barbe, meeting his eye, which softened from fierceness to laughter, and holding her fist ready for further encounter.

The Indian made some mocking gestures and menaced her playfully with his thumb. Tonty threw his arm across her shoulder and moved her on toward the convent. Barbe escaped from this touch, an entirely new matter filling her mind.

“Monsieur, even old Jonaneaux in our Hôtel Dieu hath not such a heavy hand as thou hast. Many a time hath he pulled me down off the palisade when I looked over to see the coureurs de bois go roaring by. But thou hast a hand like iron!”

Tonty flushed, being not yet hardened to his misfortune.

“It is a hand of iron. I am called Main-de-fer.”[2]

Barbe took hold of it in its glove. Of all the people she had ever met Tonty was the only person whose touch she did not resent.

“The other hand is not like unto it, monsieur?”

He gave her the other also, and she compared their weight. With a roguish lifting of her nostrils she inquired,—

“Will every bit of you turn to metal like this heavy hand?”

“Alas, no, mademoiselle; there is no hope of that.”

Tonty stripped his gauntlet off. With half afraid fingers she examined the artificial member. It was of copper.

“Where is the old one, monsieur?”

“It was blown off by a grenade at Messina last year.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not now. Except when I think of the service of Monsieur de la Salle, and of my being thus pieced out as a man.”

Barbe measured his height and breadth and warm-toned face with satisfied eyes. She consoled him.

“There is so much of you, monsieur, you can easily do without a hand.”

III.
FATHER HENNEPIN.

“Thou art a comfort to a soldier, mademoiselle,” said Tonty, heartily.

“But not to a priest,” observed Barbe. “For last birthday when I was eleven my uncle Abbé stuck out his lip and said I was eleven years bad. But my uncle La Salle kissed my cheek. There goeth François le Moyne.” Her face became suddenly distorted with grimaces of derision beside which Tonty could scarcely keep his gravity. A boy of about her own age ran past, dropping her a sneer for her pains.

“Monsieur, these Le Moynes and Sorels and Bouchers and Varennes and Joliets and Le Bers, they are all against my uncle La Salle. The girls talk about it in the convent. But he hath the governor on his side, so what can they do? I have pinched Jeanne le Ber at school, but she will never pinch back and it only makes her feel holier. So I pinch her no more. Do you know Jeanne le Ber?”

“No,” said Tonty, “I have not that pleasure.”

“Oh, monsieur, it is no pleasure. She says so many prayers. When I have prayers for penances they make me so tired I have to get up and hop between them. But Jeanne le Ber would pray all the time if her father did not pull her off her knees. My father and mother died in France. If they were alive they would not have to pull me off my knees.”

“But a woman should learn to pray, even as a man should learn to fight,” observed Tonty. “He stands between her and danger, and she should stand linking him to heaven.”

“I can fight for myself,” said Barbe. “And everybody ought to say his own prayers; but it makes one disagreeable to say more than his share. I wish to grow up an agreeable person.”

They had reached the palisade entrance which fronted the river, Barbe’s feet still lagging amid the lively scenes outside. She allowed Tonty to lead her with his left hand, thus sheltering her next the booths from streams of passing Indians and traders.

Beside this open gate she would have lingered indefinitely, chattering to a guardian who felt her hatred of convent restraint, and gazing at preparations for the council: at prunes and chopped pieces of oxen being put to boil for an Indian feast; at the governor’s chair from the fortress, where the sub-governor lived, borne by men to the middle of that space yearly occupied as the council ring. But a watchful Sister was hovering ready inside the palisade gate, and reaching forth her arm she drew her charge away from Tonty, giving him brief and scandalized thanks for his service.

Barbe looked back. It was worth Tonty’s while to catch sight of that regretful face smeared about its warm neck by curls, its lips parted to repeat and still repeat, “Adieu, monsieur. Adieu, monsieur.”

But two men had come between the disappearing child and him, one man, dressed partly like an officer and partly like a coureur de bois, throwing both arms around Tonty in the eager Latin manner.

“My cousin Henri de Tonty, welcome to the New World. I waited with my gouty leg at the fortress for you; but when you came not, like a good woodsman, I tracked you down.”

“My cousin Greysolon du Lhut! Glad am I to find you so speedily. This cold and heavy hand belies me.”

“I heard of this hand. But the other was well lost, my cousin. Take courage in beholding me; I had nearly lost a leg, and not by good powder and shot either, but with gout which disgracefully loads up a man with his own dead members. But the Iroquois virgin, Catharine Tegahkouita, hath interceded for me.”

“Monsieur de Tonty will observe we have saints among the savages in New France,” said the other man.

He was a Récollet friar with sandalled feet, wearing a gray capote of coarse texture which was girt with the cord of Saint Francis. His peaked hood hung behind his shoulders leaving his shaven crown to glisten with rosy enjoyment of the sunlight. A crucifix hung at his side; but no man ever devoted his life to prayer who was so manifestly created to enjoy the world. He had a nose of Flemish amplitude depressed in the centre, fat lips, a terraced chin, and twinkling good-humored eyes. The gray capote could not conceal a pompous swell of the stomach and the strut of his sandalled feet.

“My cousin Tonty,” said Du Lhut, “this is Father Louis Hennepin from Fort Frontenac. He hath come down to Montreal[3] to meet Monsieur de la Salle and engage himself in the new western venture.”

“Venture!” exclaimed a keen-visaged man in the garb of a merchant-colonist who was carrying a bale of goods to one of the booths,—for no man in Montreal was ashamed to get profit out of the beaver fair. “Where your Monsieur de la Salle is concerned there will be venture enough, but no results for any man but La Salle.”

He set his bale down as if it were a challenge.

Points