you knew him. Tell me, monsieur,
was he mountebank and freebooter, or a gallant gentleman much maligned?"

I removed my hat. "He was neither. He was an ambition incarnate; an
ambition so vast there were few to understand it, for it had no
personal side. You said the other night that but few motives rule men.
La Salle has been misunderstood because the usual motives--greed, the
love of woman, and the desire for fame--did not touch him. He was the
slave of one great idea, and so he was lonely and men feared him." I
finished with some defiance. I knew that the blood had risen in my
cheeks as I spoke, for some subjects touch me as if I were a woman.
The Englishman was watching me, and I disliked to have him see what I
felt was weakness. But he did not scoff. His own cheeks flushed
somewhat, and he looked off at the water.

"La Salle had more than a great idea," he said meditatively. "He had
great opportunity. He desired to found an empire in the west, did he
not, monsieur? Well, he failed, but, perhaps, that was accident. He
might have succeeded. It is not often in the history of the world that
such an opportunity comes to any person, man or woman. La Salle, at
least, tried to live up to his full stature. Monsieur, how pitiable it
would be, yes, more, how terrible it would be, to have such an
opportunity thrown in your way and know that you were too weak to seize
it."

His voice rose to some earnestness, but I was ashamed of my own
emotion, and so threw pebbles at the water and kept my mood cold. I
suspected that through all this random philosophizing I was being
probed,--probed by an Englishman who ate my rations, and wore a squaw's
dress. I grew angry.

"Who are you?" I demanded roughly. "Who are you, that you know of La
Salle and of his plans, and use the French speech. Can you, for once,
answer me fairly, or is there no sound core of honesty in you?"

He rose. But he replied, not to what I had said, but to what I had
thought. "It is true that I share your food and your escort, and that
I requite you but poorly. Yet I must remind you again, I share it
under compulsion. I cannot be entirely open with you,--are you open
with me?--but I will tell you all that it is necessary for you to know,
all that touches you in any way. I said that I was a colonist. It was
the truth, but I had been but a year in the Colonies at the time of my
capture. I was born in England, and I have passed some time in