face what a poor trader might not speak.
She reached her hand to me, and when I would have saluted it like any
dutiful subject, she took my hand in hers and placed Hortense's hand in
mine.

Then there was a great laughing and hand-shaking and protesting, with
the courtiers thronging round.

"Ha, Radisson," Barillon was saying, "you not only steal our forts--you
must rifle the court and run off with the queen's maid!"

"And there will be two marriages at the sailor's wedding," said the
queen.

It was Hortense's caprice that both marriages be deferred till we
reached Boston Town, where she must needs seek out the old Puritan
divine whom I had helped to escape so many years ago.

Before I lay down my pen, I would that I could leave with you a picture
of M. Radisson, the indomitable, the victorious, the dauntless, living
in opulence and peace!

But my last memory of him, as our ship sheered away for Boston Town, is
of a grave man standing on the quay denouncing princes' promises and
gazing into space.

M. Radisson lived to serve the Fur Company for many a year as history
tells; but his service was as the flight of a great eagle, harried by a
multitude of meaner birds.

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