tanding.
Here Le Jeune was welcomed and housed till the little mission could be
rebuilt. At first it consisted of only mud-plastered log cabins,
thatch-roofed, divided into four rooms, with garret and cellar. One
room decorated with saints' images and pictures served as chapel;
another, as {80} kitchen; a third, as lodgings; the fourth, as
refectory. In this humble abode six Jesuit priests and two lay
brothers passed the winter after the war. The roof leaked like a
sieve. The snow piled high almost as the top of the door. Le Jeune's
first care was to obtain pupils. These consisted of an Indian boy and
a negro lad left by the English. Meals of porridge given free
attracted more Indian pupils; but Le Jeune's greatest difficulty was to
learn the Indian language. Hearing that a renegade Indian named
Pierre, who had served the French as interpreter, lodged with some
Algonquins camped below Cape Diamond, Le Jeune tramped up the river
bank, along what is now the Lower Road, where he found the Indians
wigwamming, and by the bribe of free food obtained Pierre. Pierre was
at best a tricky scoundrel, who considered it a joke to give Le Jeune
the wrong word for some religious precept, gorged himself on the
missionaries' food, stole their communion wine, and ran off at Lent to
escape fasting.

[Illustration: PIERRE LE JEUNE]

When Champlain returned to receive Quebec back from the English, more
priests joined the Jesuits' mission. Among them was the lion-hearted
giant, Brebeuf.

If Champlain's bush lopers could join bands of wandering Indians for
the extension of French dominion, surely the Jesuits could dare as
perilous a life "for the greater glory of God,"--as their vows declared.

{81} Le Jeune joined a band of wandering Montaignais, Pierre, the
rascal, tapping the keg of sacramental wine the first night out, and
turning the whole camp into a drunken bedlam, till his own brother
sobered him with a kettle of hot water flung full in the face. That
night the priest slept apart from the camp in the woods. By the time
the hunters reached the forest borderland between Quebec and New
Brunswick, their number had increased to forty-five. By Christmas time
game is usually dormant, still living on the stores of the fall and not
yet driven afield by spring hunger. In camp was no food. The hunters
halted the march, and came in Christmas Eve of 1633 with not so much as
a pound of flesh for nearly fifty people. From the f