ampires sucking the life-blood of New France--the
farmers of the revenue. Indeed, His Most Christian Majesty himself
commanded those robber rulers of Quebec to desist from meddling with
the northern adventurers. And if some gentleman who has never been
farther from city cobblestones than to ride afield with the hounds or
take waters at foreign baths, should protest that no maid was ever in
so desolate a case as Mistress Hortense, I answer there are to-day many
in the same region keeping themselves pure as pond-lilies in a brackish
pool, at the forts of their fathers and husbands in the fur-trading
country. [1]

And as memory looks back to those far days, there is another--a poor,
shambling, mean-spoken, mean-clad fellow, with the scars of convict
gyves on his wrists and the dumb love of a faithful spaniel in his
eyes. Compare these two as I may--Pierre Radisson, the explorer with
fame like a meteor that drops in the dark; Jack Battle, the
wharf-rat--for the life of me I cannot tell which memory grips the more.

One played the game, the other paid the pawn. Both were misunderstood.
One took no thought but of self; the other, no thought of self at all.
But where the great man won glory that was a target for envy, the poor
sailor lad garnered quiet happiness.

[1] In confirmation of which reference may be called to the daughter of
Governor Norton in Prince of Wales Fort, north of Nelson. Hearne
reports that the poor creature died from exposure about the time of her
father's death, which was many years after Mr. Stanhope had written the
last words of this record.--_Author_.

PART I

CHAPTER I

WHAT ARE KING-KILLERS?

My father--peace to his soul!--had been of those who thronged London
streets with wine tubs to drink the restored king's health on bended
knee; but he, poor gentleman, departed this life before his monarch
could restore a wasted patrimony. For old Tibbie, the nurse, there was
nothing left but to pawn the family plate and take me, a spoiled lad in
his teens, out to Puritan kin of Boston Town.

On the night my father died he had spoken remorsefully of the past to
the lord bishop at his bedside.

"Tush, man, have a heart," cries his lordship. "Thou'lt see pasch and
yule yet forty year, Stanhope. Tush, man, 'tis thy liver, or a touch
of the gout. Take here a smack of port. Sleep sound, man, sleep
sound."

And my father slept so sound he never wakened more.

So I came to my Uncle K