By next mid-day the beaver fair was at its height, and humming above the monotone of the St. Lawrence.

Montreal, founded by religious enthusiasts and having the Sulpitian priests for its seigniors, was a quiet town when left to itself,—when the factions of Quebec did not meet its own factions in the street with clubs; or coureurs de bois roar along the house sides in drunken joy; or sudden glares on the night landscape with attendant screeching proclaim an Iroquois raid; or this annual dissipation in beaver skins crowd it for two days with strangers.

Among colonists who had thronged out to meet the bearers of colonial riches as soon as the first Indian canoe was beached, were the coureurs de bois. They still swarmed about, making or renewing acquaintances, here acting as interpreters and there trading on their own account.

Before some booths Indians pressed in rows, demanding as much as the English gave for their furs, though the price was set by law. French merchants poked their fingers into the satin pliancy of skins to search for flaws. Dealers who had no booths pressed with their interpreters from tribe to tribe,—small merchants picking the crumbs of profit from under their brethren’s tables. There was greedy demand for the first quality of skins; for beaver came to market in three grades: “Castor gras, castor demi-gras, et castor sec.”

The booths were hung with finery, upon which squaws stood gazing with a stoical eye to be envied by civilized woman.

The cassocks of Sulpitians and gray capotes of RÉcollet Fathers—favorites of Frontenac who hated Jesuits—penetrated in constant supervision every recess of the beaver fair. Yet in spite of this religious care rum was sold, its effects increasing as the day moved on.

A hazy rosy atmosphere had shorn the sun so that he hung a large red globe in the sky. The land basked in melting tints. Scarcely any wind flowed on the river. Ste. Helen’s Island and even Mount Royal, the seminary and stone windmill, the row of wooden houses and palisade tips, all had their edges blurred by hazy light.

Amusement could hardly be lacking in any gathering of French people not assembled for ceremonies of religion. In Quebec the governor’s court were inclined to entertain themselves with their own performance of spectacles. But Montreal had beheld too many spectacles of a tragic sort, had grasped too much the gun and spade, to have any facility in mimic play.

Still the beaver fair was enlivened by music and tricksy gambols. Through all the ever opening and closing avenues a pageant went up and down, at which no colonist of New France could restrain his shouts of laughter,—a Dutchman with enormous stomach, long pipe, and short breeches, walking beside a lank and solemn Bostonnais. The two youths who had attired themselves for this masking were of Saint-Castin’s train. That one who acted Puritan had drawn austere seams in his face with charcoal. His plain collar was severely turned down over a black doublet, which, with the sombre breeches and hose, had perhaps been stripped from some enemy that troubled Saint-Castin’s border. The Bostonnais sung high shrill airs from a book he carried in one hand, only looking up to shake his head with cadaverous warning at his roaring spectators. One arm was linked in the Dutchman’s, who took his pipe out of his mouth to say good-humoredly, “Ya-ya, ya-ya,” to every sort of taunt.

These types of rival colonies were such an exhilaration to the traders of New France that they pointed out the show to each other and pelted it with epithets all day.

La Salle came out of the palisade gate of the town, leading by the hand a frisking little girl. He restrained her from farther progress into the moving swarm, although she dragged his arm.

“Thou canst here see all there is of it, Barbe. The nuns did well to oppose your looking on this roaring commerce. You should be housed within the HÔtel Dieu all this day, had I not spoken a careless word yesterday. You saw the governor’s procession. To-morrow he will start on his return. And I with my men go to Fort Frontenac.”

“And at day dawn naught of the Indians can be found,” added Barbe, “except their ashes and litter and the broken flasks they leave. The trader’s booths will also be empty and dirty.”

“Come then, tiger-cat, return to thy cage.”

“My uncle La Salle, let me look a moment longer. See that fat man and his lean brother the people are pointing at! Even the Indians jump and jeer. I would strike them for such insolence! There, my uncle La Salle, there is Monsieur Iron-hand talking to the ugly servant of Jeanne le Ber’s father.”

La Salle easily found Tonty. He was instructing and giving orders to several men collected for the explorer’s service. Jolycoeur,[6] his cap set on sidewise, was yet abashed in his impudence by the mastery of Tonty. He wore a new suit of buckskin, with the coureur de bois’ red sash knotted around his waist.

“My uncle La Salle,” inquired Barbe, turning over a disturbance in her mind, “must I live in the convent until I wed a man?”

“The convent is held a necessary discipline for young maids.”

“I will then choose Monsieur Iron-hand directly. He would make a good husband.”

“I think you are right,” agreed La Salle.

“Because he would have but one hand to catch me with when I wished to run away,” explained Barbe. “If he had also lost his feet it would be more convenient.”

“The marriage between Monsieur de Tonty and Mademoiselle Barbe Cavelier may then be arranged?”

She looked at her uncle, answering his smile of amusement. But curving her neck from side to side, she still examined the Italian soldier.

“I can outrun most people,” suggested Barbe; “but Monsieur de Tonty looks very tall and strong.”

“Your intention is to take to the woods as soon as marriage sets you free?”

“My uncle La Salle, I do have such a desire to be free in the woods!”

“Have you, my child? If the wilderness thus draws you, you will sometime embrace it. Cavelier blood is wild juice.”

“And could I take my fortune with me? If it cumbered I would leave it behind with Monsieur de Tonty or my brother.”

“You will need all your fortune for ventures in the wilderness.”

“And the fortunes of all your relatives and of as many as will give you credit besides,” said a priest wearing the Sulpitian dress. He stopped before them and looked sternly at Barbe.

The AbbÉ Jean Cavelier had not such robust manhood as his brother. In him the Cavelier round lower lip and chin protruded, and the eyebrows hung forward.

La Salle had often felt that he stooped in conciliating Jean, when Jean held the family purse and doled out loans to an explorer always kept needy by great plans.

Jean had strongly the instinct of accumulation. He gauged the discovery and settlement of a continent by its promise of wealth to himself. His adherence to La Salle was therefore delicately adjusted by La Salle’s varying fortunes; though at all times he gratified himself by handling with tyranny this younger and distinguished brother. Generous admiration of another’s genius flowering from his stock with the perfect expression denied him, was scarcely possible in Jean Cavelier.

“The Sisters said I might come hither with my uncle La Salle,” replied Barbe, to his unspoken rebuke.

“Into whose charge were your brother and yourself put when your parents died?”

“Into the charge of my uncle the AbbÉ Cavelier.”

“Who brought your brother and you to this colony that he might watch over your nurture?”

“My uncle the AbbÉ Cavelier.”

“It is therefore your uncle the AbbÉ Cavelier who will decide when to turn you out among Indians and traders.”

“You carry too bitter a tongue, my brother Jean,” observed La Salle. “The child has caught no harm. My own youth was cramped within religious walls.”

“You carry too arrogant a mind now, my brother La Salle. I heard it noted of you to-day that you last night sat apart and deigned no word to them that have been of use to you in Montreal.”

La Salle’s face owned the sting. Shy natures have always been made to pay a tax on pride. But next to the slanderer we detest the bearer of his slander to our ears.

“It is too much for any man to expect in this world,—a brother who will defend him against his enemies.”

As soon as this regret had burst from the explorer, he rested his look again on Tonty.

“I do defend you,” asserted AbbÉ Cavelier; “and more than that I impoverish myself for you. But now that you come riding back from France on a high tide of the king’s favor, I may not lay a correcting word on your haughty spirit. Neither yesterday nor to-day could I bring you to any reasonable state of humility. And all New France in full cry against you!”

Extreme impatience darkened La Salle’s face; but without further reply he drew Barbe’s hand and turned back with her toward the HÔtel Dieu. She had watched her uncle the AbbÉ wrathfully during his attack upon La Salle, but as he dropped his eyes no more to her level she was obliged to carry away her undischarged anger. This she did with a haughty bearing so like La Salle’s that the AbbÉ grinned at it through his fretfulness.

He grew conscious of alien hair bristling against his neck as a voice mocked in undertone directly below his ear,—

“Yonder struts a great Bashaw that will sometime be laid low!”

The AbbÉ turned severely upon a person who presumed to tickle a priest’s neck with his coarse mustache and astound a priest’s ear with threats.

He recognized the man known as Jolycoeur, who had been pushed against him in the throng. Jolycoeur, by having his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure of La Salle, had missed the ear of the person he intended to reach. He recoiled from encountering the AbbÉ, whose wrath with sudden ebb ran back from a brother upon a brother’s foes.

“You are the fellow I saw whining yesterday at Sieur de la Salle’s heels. What hath the Sieur de la Salle done to any of you worthless woods-rangers, except give you labor and wages, when the bread you eat is a waste of his substance?”

Jolycoeur, not daring to reply to a priest, slunk away in the crowd.