oo infirm.

From him, as they sat together and watched the diggers, John learned
much of the fort's history, and something, too, of his hosts'; for
Father Joly delighted in gossip, and being too deaf to derive much
profit from asking questions kept the talk to himself--greatly to
John's relief. His gossip, be it said, was entirely innocent.
The good man seemed to love every one in his small world, except
Father Launoy. And again this exception was fortunate; for on
learning that John had been visited and exhorted at Boisveyrac by
Father Launoy, Father Joly showed no further concern in his spiritual
health. He was perhaps the oldest parochial priest in New France,
and since leaving the seminary at Quebec had spent almost all his
days at Boisveyrac. He remembered the Seigneur's father (he always
called the Commandant "the Seigneur"). "Such a man, monsieur!
He stood six feet four inches in his stockings, and could lift and
cast a grown bullock with his own hands." John pointed out that the
present Seigneur--in his working blouse especially--made a fine
figure of a man; but this the old priest could hardly be brought to
allow. "A heart of gold, I grant you; but to have seen his father
striding among his _censitaires_ on St. Martin's Feast! It may be
that, having watched the son from childhood, I still think of him as
a boy. . . ."

Of Fort Amitie itself Father Joly had much to tell. It dated from
the early days of the great Frontenac, who had planted a settlement
here--a collection of wooden huts within a stockade--to be an
_entrepot_ of commerce with the Indians of the Upper Lakes. Later it
became a favourite haunt of deserters from the army and _coureurs de
bois_ outlawed by royal edict; and, strangely enough, these had been
the days of its prosperity. Its real decline began when the
Governor, toward the end of his rule, replaced the wooden huts with a
fortress of stone. The traders, trappers, ne'er-do-wells and Indians
deserted the lake-head, which had been a true camp of amity, and
moved their rendezvous farther west, leaving the fortress to its
Commandant and a sleepy garrison.

From that time until the war the garrison had been composed of
regulars, who lived on the easiest terms with their Commandant and
his officers, and retired at the age of forty or fifty, when King
Louis presented them with a farm and farm stock and provisions for
two or three years, and often completed the outfit with a wife.