of light sprung into Tonty’s eyes and the blood in his face showed its quickening.

“Monsieur,” he spoke, “if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”

“Monsieur,” spoke Tonty, “if you are a gentleman you shall answer to me for slandering Monsieur de la Salle.”—Page 32.

“Jacques le Ber is a noble of the colony,” declared Du Lhut, with the derisive freedom this great ranger and leader of coureurs de bois assumed toward any one; “for hath he not purchased his patent of King Louis for six thousand livres? But look you, my cousin Tonty, if the king allowed not us colonial nobles to engage in trade he would lose us all by starvation; for scarce a miserable censitaire on our lands can pay us his capon and pint of wheat at the end of the year.”

“I will answer to you, monsieur,” said Jacques le Ber to the soldier, ”that La Salle is the enemy of the colony, and the betrayer of them that have been his friends.”

Father Hennepin and Du Lhut caught Tonty’s arms. Du Lhut then dragged him with expostulations inside the palisade gate, repeating Frontenac’s strict orders that all quarrels should be suppressed during the beaver fair, and as the young man’s furious looks still sought the merchant, reminding him of the harm he might do La Salle by an open quarrel with Montreal traders.

“I, who am not bound to La Salle as close as thou art,—I tell you it will not do,” declared Du Lhut.

“Let the man keep his distance, then!”

“Why, you hot-blooded fellow! why do you take these Frenchmen so seriously?”

“Sieur de la Salle is my friend. I will strike any man who denounces him.”

“Oh, come out toward the mountain. Let us make a little pilgrimage,” laughed Du Lhut. “We must cool thee, Tonty, we must cool thee; or La Salle’s enemies will lie in one heap the length of Montreal, mowed by this iron hand!”

As Jacques le Ber carried forward his bale, Father Hennepin walked beside him dealing forth good-natured remonstrance with fat hands and out-turned lips.

“My son, God save me from the man who doth nurse a grievance. Your case is simply this: our governor built a fort at Cataraqui, and it is now called Fort Frontenac. He put you and associates of yours in charge, and you had profit of that fort. Afterward, by his recommendation to the king, Sieur de la Salle was made seignior of Fort Frontenac and lands thereabout. This hast thou ever since bitterly chewed to the poisoning of thy immortal soul.”

“You churchmen all,—Jesuits, Sulpitians, or Récollets,—are over zealous to domineer in this colony,” spoke Jacques le Ber, through the effort of carrying his bale.

“My son,” said Father Hennepin, swelling his stomach and inflating his throat, “why should I enter the mendicant order of Saint Francis and live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue, if I felt no zeal for saving souls?”

“I spoke of domineering,” repeated the angry merchant.

“And touching Monsieur de la Salle,” said Father Hennepin, “I exhort thee not to love him; for who could love him,—but to rid thyself of hatred of any one.”

“Father Hennepin has not then attached himself to La Salle’s new enterprise?”

“I have a grand plan of discovery of my own,” said the friar, deeply, rolling his shaven head, “an enterprise which would terrify anybody but me. The Sieur de la Salle merely opens my path. I will confess to thee, my son, that in youth I often hid myself behind the doors of taverns,—which were no fit haunts for men of holy life,—to hearken unto sailors’ tales of strange lands. And thus would I willingly do without eating or drinking, such burning desire I had to explore new countries.”

The Father did not observe that Jacques le Ber had reached his own booth and was there arranging his goods regardless of explorations in strange lands, but walked on, talking to the air, his out-thrust lips rounding every word, until some derisive savage pointed out this solo.

Jacques le Ber made ready to take his place in the governor’s council, thinking wrathfully of his encounter with Tonty. He dwelt, as we all do, upon the affronts and hindrances of the present, rather than on his prospect of founding a strong and worthy family in the colony.

IV.
A COUNCIL.

The North American savage, with an unerring instinct which republics might well study, sent his wisest men to the front to represent him.

A great circle of Indians, ranged according to their tribes, sat around Frontenac when the stone windmill trod its noon shadow underfoot. Te Deum had been sung in the chapel, and thanks offered for his safe arrival. The principal men of Montreal, with the governor’s white and gold officers, sat now within the circle behind his chair.

But Frontenac faced every individual of his Indian children, moving before them, their natural leader, as he made his address of greeting, admonition, and approval, through Du Lhut as interpreter. The old courtier loved Indians. They appealed to that same element in him which the coureurs de bois knew how to reach. The Frenchman has a wild strain of blood. He takes kindly and easily to the woods. He makes himself an appropriate and even graceful figure against any wilderness background, and goes straight to Nature’s heart, carrying all the refinements of civilization with him.

The smoke of the peace pipe went up hour after hour. By strictest rules of precedence each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe’s reply to Onontio.[4] An Indian never hurried eloquence. The sun might tip toward Mount Royal, and the steam of his own deferred feast reach his nose in delicious suggestion. He had to raise the breeze of prosperity, to clear the sun, to wipe away tears for friends slain during past misunderstandings with Onontio’s other children, and to open the path of peace between their lodges and the lodges of his tribe. Ottawa, Huron, Cree, Nipissing, Ojibwa, or Pottawatamie, it was necessary for him to bury the hatchet in pantomime, to build a great council-fire whose smoke should rise to heaven in view of all the nations, and gather the tribes of the lakes in one family council with the French around this fire forever.

“Each red orator rose in his turn and spoke his tribe’s reply.”—Page 40.

Children played along the river’s brink, and squaws kept fire under the kettles. A few men guarded the booths along the palisades from pilferers, though scarce a possible pilferer roamed from the centre of interest.

Crowds of spectators pressed around the great circle; traders who had brought packs of skins skilfully intercepted by them at some