“Yet she gave you this key to an empire,” I suggested.  I had been rude, and I repented it, and more than that, there was something in the man that tempted me to offer him flattery even as I desire to give sweets to an engaging child.

But this cajolery he swept away with a fling of his heavy arm.  “The key to an empire!” 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, Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac?”

The commandant shook his head.  “My hare is still at large,” he confessed.  “Though just now——­ Come, Monsieur de Montlivet, let us to plain speech.  We are talking as slantingly as savages.  I have a Huron messenger at my quarters.  Come with me, and interpret.”