dians
from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."

Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip
tremble and twitch.

"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"

"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green
Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to
Montreal."

La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief
but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking
his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the
Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.

Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an
alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon
to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and
the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always
admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts,
guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made
his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort
Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the
real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.

It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and
Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's
black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly
as if they were another man's.

"Any one else," said Father Membre, who stood by, "would abandon the
enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of
purpose."

"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other
Recollet.

Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods
when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by
the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally
made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.

Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along
the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the
boat.

"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and
some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay
we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water
there rose a northwest wind with driving snow,