mpire!" he echoed contemptuously. "They are fine words, and
the mischief is that they are true. Yet food in my stomach, and money
in my pocket, would mean more to me just now. I must speak to this
Indian. Will you wait for me, monsieur? I have business with you."

I bowed, and resumed my walk. "The key to an empire!" I said my own
words over, and could have blushed for their tone of bombast. They
were true, but they sounded false, I looked at my surroundings, and
marveled that a situation that was of real dignity could wear so mean a
garb. The sandy cove where I stood was on the mainland, and sheltered
four settlements. Behind lay the forest; in front stretched Lake
Huron, a waterway that was our only link with the men and nations we
had left behind. The settlements were contiguous in body, but even my
twenty-four hours' acquaintance had shown me that they were leagues
apart in mind. There were a French fort, a Jesuit convent, a village
of Ottawas, and, barred by the aristocracy of a palisade, a village of
Hurons. The scale of precedence was plain to read. The huts of the
savages were wattled, interlaced of poles and bark; the French
buildings were of wood, but roofed with rough cedar; the only houses
with board roofs were those of the Jesuits. In later times when I
found Father Carheil hard to understand, I used to say to myself that
he was not to be held too strictly to account for his contradictions,
for though one learns to think great thoughts in the wilderness, it is
not done easily when there is sawed lumber to shut away the sky.

Cadillac came back to me in a few moments. He had lost his swelling
port, and was frowning with thought. "I saw you in the Huron camp,
Montlivet," he said. "Do you understand their speech?"

Now this was a question that I thought it as well to put by. "Would
you call it speech?" I demurred. "It sounded more like snarling."

"Then you do understand it?"

I kicked at the dogs at my feet. "Frowns are a common language. I
could understand them, at least. The camp is restless. Are they
hungry?"

Cadillac shrugged his shoulders. "Possibly. But it is not hunger that
sagamite or maize cakes can reach. Would a taste of Iroquois broth put
them in better condition, do you think?"

I turned away somewhat sickened. "It is a savage remedy," I broke out.
"And a good cook will catch his hare before he talks of putting it in
the pot. Where is your Iroquois hare, Monsie