k came like a
peach-blossom. 'A very good morning, ma'm'selle,' said I, in English.
She smiled and said the same. 'And your master, where is he?' she asked
with a fine smile. 'My friend Monsieur Iberville?' I said; 'ah! he will
be in Quebec soon.' Then I told her of the abbe, and she took from a
chain a little medallion and gave it me in memory of the time we saved
her. And before I could say Thank you, she had gone--Well, that is
all--except this."

He drew from his breast a chain of silver, from which hung the gold
medallion, and shook his head at it with good-humour. But presently
a hard look came on his face, and he was changed from the cheerful
woodsman into the chief of bushrangers. Iberville read the look, and
presently said:

"Perrot, men have fought for less than gold from a woman's chain and a
buckle from her shoe."

"I have fought from Trois Pistoles to Michilimackinac for the toss of a
louis-d'or."

"As you say. Well, what think you--"

He paused, rose, walked up and down the room, caught his moustache
between his teeth once or twice, and seemed buried in thought. Once or
twice he was about to speak, but changed his mind. He was calculating
many things: planning, counting chances, marshalling his resources.
Presently he glanced round the room. His eyes fell on a map. That was
it. It was a mere outline, but enough. Putting his finger on it, he sent
it up, up, up, till it settled on the shores of Hudson's Bay. Again he
ran the finger from the St. Lawrence up the coast and through Hudson's
Straits, but shook his head in negation. Then he stood, looked at the
map steadily, and presently, still absorbed, turned to the table. He saw
the violin, picked it up, and handed it to De Casson:

"Something with a smack of war," he said. "And a woman for me," added
Perrot.

The abbe shook his head musingly at Perrot, took the violin, and
gathered it to his chin. At first he played as if in wait of something
that eluded him. But all at once he floated into a powerful melody, as a
stream creeps softly through a weir, and after many wanderings broadens
suddenly into a great stream. He had found his theme. Its effect was
striking. Through Iberville's mind there ran a hundred incidents of his
life, one chasing upon the other without sequence--phantasmagoria out of
the scene--house of memory:

The light upon the arms of De Tracy's soldiers when they marched up
Mountain Street many years before--The frozen figure of a m