true, for you are not dark, your eyes are
not big or black, your laces are not much to see, you do not make
compliments--"

"I shall begin now," he interrupted.

"--you must be trusted a little, or Count Frontenac would not send you,
and--and--tell me, would you fight if you had a chance?"

No one of her sex had ever talked so to Iberville. Her demure raillery,
her fresh, frank impertinence, through which there ran a pretty air of
breeding, her innocent disregard of formality, all joined to impress
him, to interest him. He was not so much surprised at the elegance and
cleverness of her speech, for in Quebec girls of her age were skilled in
languages and arts, thanks to the great bishop, Laval, and to Marie of
the Incarnation. In response to her a smile flickered upon his lips. He
had a quick fierce temper, but it had never been severely tried; and so
well used was he to looking cheerfully upon things, so keen had been his
zest in living, that, where himself was concerned, his vanity was
not easily touched. So, looking with genial dryness, "You will hardly
believe it, of course," he said, "but wings I have not yet grown, and
the walking is bad 'twixt here and the Chateau St. Louis."

"Iroquois traps," she suggested, with a smile. "With a trick or two of
English footpads," was his reply.

Meanwhile his eye had loitered between the two men in council at the
farther window and the garden, into which he and the girl were looking.
Presently he gave a little start and a low whistle, and his eyelids
slightly drooped, giving him a handsome sulkiness. "Is it so?" he said
between his teeth: "Radisson--Radisson, as I live!"

He had seen a man cross a corner of the yard. This man was short,
dark-bearded, with black, lanky hair, brass earrings, and buckskin
leggings, all the typical equipment of the French coureur du bois.
Iberville had only got one glance at his face, but the sinister profile
could never be forgotten. At once the man passed out of view. The girl
had not seen him, she had been watching her companion. Presently she
said, her fingers just brushing his sleeve, for he stood eyeing the
point where the man had disappeared: "Wonderful! You look now as if you
would fight. Oh, fierce, fierce as the governor when he catches a French
spy!"

He turned to her and, with a touch of irony, "Pardon!" he retorted. "Now
I shall look as blithe as the governor when a traitor deserts to him."

Of purpose he spoke loud enough to b