thankful to be solved unto themselves. The great moment for
a man with a woman is when, by some clear guess or some special
providence, he shows her in a flash her own mind. Her respect, her
serious wonder, are all then making for his glory. Wise and happy if by
a further touch of genius he seizes the situation: henceforth he is her
master. George Gering and Jessica had been children together, and he
understood her, perhaps, as, did no one else, save her father; though he
never made good use of his knowledge, nor did he touch that side of her
which was purely feminine--her sweet inconsistency; therefore, he was
not her master.

But he had appealed to her, for he had courage, strong, ambition,
thorough kindness, and fine character, only marred by a want of
temperament. She had avoided as long as she could the question which,
on his return from service in the navy, he asked her, almost without
warning; and with a touch of her old demureness and gaiety she had
put him off, bidding him go win his laurels as commander. He was then
commissioned for Hudson's Bay, and expected, on his return, to proceed
to the Spaniards' country with William Phips, if that brave gentleman
succeeded with the king or his nobles. He had gone north with his ship,
and, as we have seen, when Iberville started on that almost impossible
journey, was preparing to return to Boston. As he waited Iberville came
on.

CHAPTER X

QUI VIVE!

From Land's End to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from
Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more,
however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater
hardships also then. But weighed against the greater hardships there was
a bolder temper and a more romantic spirit.

How strange and severe a journey it was, only those can tell who have
travelled those wastes, even in these later days, when paths have been
beaten down from Mount Royal to the lodges of the North. When they
started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound
their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles,
the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind
him. At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the
north-west, and came at last to the Lake of the Winds. They travelled
across one corner of it, to a point where they would strike an unknown
path to Hudson's Bay.

Iberville had never before seen this lake,