s interminable prayers, and the bull
voice in which he offered them. I have never made mock of religion,
coming of a line of godly ancestors, yet I felt there could be no
necessity for making such noise over it morning, noon, and night. Yet
neither entreaty nor threat moved him to desist, so I came to the
conclusion that he either considered the Almighty deaf, or else was
totally unconscious of his own lung power. As to his appetite--but
there are things of which one may not justly write, so I content myself
by saying that, all in all, he was not so bad a comrade.

De Noyan kept to his nature, and I liked him none the worse for it,
although it is not pleasant to have at your side a gay cavalier one
moment and a peevish woman the next. You never know which may be
uppermost. Yet he performed his full share of toil like a man, and,
when not curling his long moustachios, or swearing in provincial
French, was mostly what he should be, a careless soldier of fortune, to
whom life appealed more as a play than a stern duty. He was of that
spirit most severely tried by such drudgery, and, looking back upon it,
I can only wonder he bore the burden as cheerfully as he did. Beneath
his reckless, grumbling exterior, the metal of the man was not of such
poor quality.

However continual labor and enforced companionship told upon the rest,
Madame retained her sweetness through it all, hushing our lips from
many a sharp retort that had threatened to disrupt our party long
before this time. She had merely to glance toward us to silence any
rising strife, for no man having a true heart beneath his doublet could
find spirit to quarrel before the disapproving glance of her dark eyes.
It was thus we toiled forward, until one frosty morning our boat
arrived where this great stream poured forth from the west, forcing its
reddish, muddy current far out into the wide river against which we had
struggled so long. Slowly rounding the low, marshy promontory, and
beginning to feel the fierce tug of down-pouring waters against our
bow, I observed the old Puritan suddenly cock up his ears, like some
suspicious watch-dog, twisting his little glittering eyes from side to
side, as though the spot looked familiar.

"Do you suspect anything wrong, my pious friend," I questioned
curiously, "that you indulge in such sniffing of the air?"

"'Tis a spot I know well, now it looms fairly into view," he answered
solemnly, continuing to peer about like