ght of the cause, provided the fighter come out conqueror; and many a
poet praises only that right which is might over-trampling weakness. I
have heard the withered hag of an Indian camp chant as spirited
war-song as your minstrels of butchery; but the strange thing of it is,
that the people, who have taken the sword in a wantonness of conquest,
are the races that have been swept from the face of the earth like dead
leaves before the winter blast; but the people, who have held immutably
by the power of right, which our Lord Christ set up, the meek and the
peace-makers and the children of God, these are they that inherit the
earth.

Where are the tribes with whom Godefroy and Jack Battle and I wandered
in nomadic life over the northern wastes? Buried in oblivion black as
night, but for the lurid memories flashed down to you of later
generations. Where are the Puritan folk, with their cast-iron, narrow
creeds damning all creation but themselves, with their foibles of
snivelling to attest sanctity, with such a wolfish zeal to hound down
devils that they hounded innocents for witchcraft? Spreading over the
face of the New World, making the desert to bloom and the waste places
fruitful gardens? And the reason for it all is simply this: Your
butchering Indian, like your swashing cavalier, founded his _right_
upon _might_; your Puritan, grim but faithful, to the outermost bounds
of his tragic errors, founded his _might_ upon _right_.

We learn our hardest lessons from unlikeliest masters. This one came
to me from the Indians of the blood-dyed northern snows.

* * * * * *

"Don't show your faces till you have something to report about those
pirates, who led the Indians," was M. Radisson's last command, as we
sallied from the New Englanders' fort with a firing of cannon and
beating of drums.

Godefroy, the trader, muttered under his breath that M. Radisson need
never fear eternal torment.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because, if he goes _there_," answered Godefroy, "he'll get the better
o' the Nick."

I think the fellow was smarting from recent punishment. He and
Allemand, the drunken pilot, had been draining gin kegs on the sly and
replacing what they took with snow water. That last morning at prayers
Godefroy, who was half-seas over, must yelp out a loud "Amen" in the
wrong place. Without rising from his knees, or as much as changing his
tone, M. de Radisson brought the drunken knave suc