ery
occasion he craved of making himself famous and deserving of reward as
an explorer. It was true that he started as a subordinate, but that was
no reason that he should return in the same capacity. Marie had served
the noble guests with pleasant alacrity, passing the rainbow-tinted
trout caught as well as broiled by her own hand, and the luscious
huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de
Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like
Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that
crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious
dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by
the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ever ready smile.

History tells how trial and privation of every kind waited on this
little band of heroic men--how hunger, and cold, and fever dogged their
steps; how the Indians proved treacherous and hostile; how, having
reached central Illinois after incredible exertion, they found
themselves in the dead of winter unable to proceed further, and
surrounded by tribes incited against them by some unknown enemy. A
fatality seemed to hang over them; suspicious occurrences indicated that
they had a traitor among their number, but he was never discovered. La
Salle did not despair or abandon the enterprise, but when six of his
most trusted men mutinied and deserted, he lost hope, and became seized
with a presentiment that he would never return from his expedition.
Father Xavier was his confidant as well as confessor, but he seems not
to have been able to disperse the gloom which settled over the leader's
mind. Perhaps he did not endeavor to do so. Hopeless but still true to
his trust, La Salle constructed near Peoria a fort which he named
Crevecoeur, in token of his despondency and disappointment. Leaving
Tontz Main de Fer in command here with the greater part of his men, he
set out with five for Frontenac, on the 2d of March, 1680, intending to
return with supplies to take command again of his party, and to proceed
southward. It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the
entire enterprise occurred. Before the party divided _some one_
attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle. The poison was a subtle and
slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the
secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy.
Fortunately he had taken