ver, who is a rope-walker? Why, when our sailors starve unpaid and
gold enough lies on the basset-table of a Sunday night to feed the
army? Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "why do I hate this life? Why must you
and Madame Radisson and Lady Kirke all push me here?"

"Hortense," I broke in, "you were a ward of the crown! What else was
there for us to do?"

"Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "what else? You kept your promise, and a
ward of the crown must marry whom the king names--"

"Marry?"

"Or--or go to a nunnery abroad."

"A nunnery?"

"Ah, yes!" mocks Hortense, "what else is there to do?"

And at that comes Blood crashing through the brush.

"Here, fellow, hands off that bridle!"

"The horse became restless. This gentleman held him for me till you
came."

"Gad's life!" cries the lieutenant, dismounting. "Let's see?" And he
examines the girths with a great show of concern. "A nasty tumble,"
says he, as if Hortense had been rolled on. "All sound, Mistress
Hillary! Egad! You must not ride such a wild beast! I protest, such
risks are too desperate!" And he casts up the whites of his eyes at
Mistress Hortense, laying his hand on his heart. "When did you feel
him getting away from you?"

"At the wall," says Hortense.

The lieutenant vaulted to his saddle.

"Here, fellow!"

He had tossed me a gold-piece. They were off. I lifted the coin,
balanced it on my thumb, and flipped it ringing against the wall. When
I looked up, Hortense was laughing back over her shoulder.

On May 17th we sailed from Gravesend in the Happy Return, two ships
accompanying us for Hudson Bay, and a convoy of the Royal Marine coming
as far as the north of Scotland to stand off Dutch highwaymen and
Spanish pirates.

But I made the news of Jack Battle's marriage the occasion of a letter
to one of the queen's maids of honour.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOME FROM THE BAY

'Twas as fair sailing under English colours as you could wish till
Pierre Radisson had undone all the mischief that he had worked against
the Fur Company in Hudson Bay. Pierre Radisson sits with a pipe in his
mouth and his long legs stretched clear across the cabin-table,
spinning yarns of wild doings in savage lands, and Governor Phipps, of
the Hudson's Bay Company, listens with eyes a trifle too sleepily
watchful, methinks, for the Frenchman's good. A summer sea kept us
course all the way to the northern bay, and sometimes Pierre Radisson
would fling out of th