freely as you
will. Perrot is true. He was with me, too, at the beginning."

At that moment there came a knock, and in an instant the coureur du bois
had caught the hands of the young man, and was laughing up in his face.

"By the good Sainte Anne, but you make Nick Perrot a dwarf, dear
monsieur!"

"Well, well, little man, I'll wager neither the great abbe here nor
myself could bring you lower than you stand, for all that. Comrade, 'tis
kind of you to come so prompt."

"What is there so good as the face of an old friend!" said Perrot,
with a little laugh. "You will drink with a new, and eat with a coming
friend, and quarrel with either; but 'tis only the old friend that knows
the old trail, and there's nothing to a man like the way he has come in
the world."

"The trail of the good comrade," said the priest softly.

"Ah!" responded Perrot, "I remember, abbe, when we were at the Portneuf
you made some verses of that--eh! eh! but they were good!"

"No fitter time," said Iberville; "come, abbe, the verses!"

"No, no; another day," answered the priest.

It was an interesting scene. Perrot, short, broad, swarthy, dressed
in rude buckskin gaudily ornamented, bandoleer and belt garnished with
silver,--a recent gift of some grateful merchant, standing between the
powerful black-robed priest and this gallant sailor-soldier, richly
dressed in fine skins and furs, with long waving hair, more like a
Viking than a man of fashion, and carrying a courtly and yet sportive
look, as though he could laugh at the miseries of the sinful world.
Three strange comrades were these, who knew each other so far as one man
can know another, yet each knowing from a different stand-point. Perrot
knew certain traits of Iberville of which De Casson was ignorant, and
the abbe knew many depths which Perrot never even vaguely plumbed. And
yet all could meet and be free in speech, as though each read the other
thoroughly.

"Let us begin," said Iberville. "I want news of New York."

"Let us eat as we talk," urged the abbe.

They all sat and were soon eating and drinking with great relish.

Presently the abbe began:

"Of my first journey you know by the letter I sent you: how I found that
Mademoiselle Leveret was gone to England with her father. That was a
year after you left, now about three years gone. Monsieur Gering entered
the navy of the English king, and went to England also."

Iberville nodded. "Yes, yes, in the English navy I know