st and one for the cities," said he,
"though indeed my good father will not have it so, and carries
Versailles with him wherever he goes. You know him of old, monsieur,
and I need not explain my words. But it is time for our relief, and so
we may guide you home."

Two men in the rude dress of Canadian _censitaires_ or farmers, but
carrying their muskets in a fashion which told De Catinat's trained
senses that they were disciplined soldiers, had suddenly appeared upon
the scene. Young De la Noue gave them a few curt injunctions, and then
accompanied the refugees along the path.

"You may not know my friend here," said he, pointing to the other
sentinel, "but I am quite sure that his name is not unfamiliar to you.
This is Greysolon du Lhut."

Both Amos and De Catinat looked with the deepest curiosity and interest
at the famous leader of _coureurs-de-bois_, a man whose whole life had
been spent in pushing westward, ever westward, saying little, writing
nothing, but always the first wherever there was danger to meet or
difficulty to overcome. It was not religion and it was not hope of gain
which led him away into those western wildernesses, but pure love of
nature and of adventure, with so little ambition that he had never cared
to describe his own travels, and none knew where he had been or where he
had stopped. For years he would vanish from the settlements away into
the vast plains of the Dacotah, or into the huge wilderness of the
north-west, and then at last some day would walk back into Sault La
Marie, or any other outpost of civilisation, a little leaner, a little
browner, and as taciturn as ever. Indians from the furthest corners of
the continent knew him as they knew their own sachem. He could raise
tribes and bring a thousand painted cannibals to the help of the French
who spoke a tongue which none knew, and came from the shores of rivers
which no one else had visited. The most daring French explorers, when,
after a thousand dangers, they had reached some country which they
believed to be new, were as likely as not to find Du Lhut sitting by his
camp fire there, some new squaw by his side, and his pipe between his
teeth. Or again, when in doubt and danger, with no friends within a
thousand miles, the traveller might suddenly meet this silent man, with
one or two tattered wanderers of his own kidney, who would help him from
his peril, and then vanish as unexpectedly as he came. Such was the man
who now