I was a soldier for the king as
well as a traveler of the forest. Was I not with the Le Moynes and the
band that crossed the icy North and destroyed your robbing English fur
posts on the Bay of Hudson? I fought there and helped blow down your
barriers. I packed my own robe on my back, and walked for the king, till
the _raquette_ thongs cut my ankles to the bone. For what? When I came
back to the settlements at Quebec I was seized for a _coureur de bois_,
a free trader. I was herded like a criminal into a French ship, sent
over seas to a French prison, branded with a French iron, and set like a
brute to pull without reason at a bar of wood in the king's galleys--the
king's hell!"

"And yet you are a Frenchman," sneered Wilson.

"Yet am I not a Frenchman," cried the other. "Nor am I an Englishman. I
am no man of a world of galleys and brands. I am a man of America!"

"'Tis true what he says," spoke Pembroke. "'Tis said the minister of
Louis was feared to keep these men in the galleys, lest their fellows in
New France should become too bitter, and should join the savages in
their inroads on the starving settlements of Quebec and Montreal."

"True," exclaimed Du Mesne. "The _coureurs_ care naught for the law and
little for the king. As for a ruler, we have discovered that a man makes
a most excellent sovereign for himself."

"And excellent said," cried Castleton.

"None of ye know the West," went on the _coureur_. "Your Virginia, we
know well of it--a collection of beggars, prostitutes and thieves. Your
New England--a lot of cod-fishing, starving snivelers, who are most
concerned how to keep life in their bodies from year to year. New France
herself, sitting ever on the edge of an icy death, with naught but
bickerings at Quebec and naught but reluctant compliance from
Paris--what hath she to hope? I tell ye, gentlemen, 'tis beyond, in the
land of the Messasebe, where I shall for my part seek out my home; and
no man shall set iron on my soul again."

He spoke bitterly. The group about him, half amused, half cynical and
all ignorant, as were their kind at this time of the reign of William,
were none the less impressed and thoughtful. Yet once more the sneering
voice of Wilson broke in.

"A strange land, my friend," said he, "monstrous strange. Your unicorns
are great, and your women are little. Methinks to give thy tale
proportion thou shouldst have shown shoon somewhat larger."

"Peace! Beau," said Castleton, quick