* Afterward Fort Frontenac.
It had been a trip of inspection, I gathered typical of the nervous energy of the French Government, not content, as were the rulers of the English colonies, to rest satisfied with a strip of seacoast or the valley of a tidal river, but forever reaching out for new lands to develop and acquire and hold in fee as a heritage for the future—a trip of thousands of leagues by river and forest, under all extremes of heat and cold. And if the humble corporal knew nothing of such high policies, nonetheless I was sure that one of Le Moyne's objects must have been the selection of suitable points for a chain of trading stations and military posts along the line of the Ohio and the Mississippi to link up the New Orleans settlement with Canada, and so bar England once for all from the untapped resources of the Far West beyond the Great River.
Somewhat of these reflections I communicated to my comrades as we ate our evening meal, and we were still discussing the significance of our chance encounter when an ensign came to summon us to Le Moyne. The French Commander was sitting by a fire in a deep glade that ran back from the river's brink toward the forest. Black Robe was standing beside him when we arrived, hot eyes shining uncannily in the glare of the leaping flames, distorted fingers twitching his rosary beads.
"Be seated," said Le Moyne briefly. And then falteringly, in the Seneca dialect: "Tawannears, and you, Corlaer, pardon me if I speak in French to your friend. My tongue has not the knack of the Iroquois speech."
Tawannears bowed with the gracious assent of a prince. Corlaer squeaked "Ja."
Le Moyne turned to me, his manner hostile, his accent crisp.
"I have been hearing bad things about you, Monsieur Ormerod. The reverend father tells me you are a secret envoy of the English, a spy, in other words, one they send abroad to sow trouble betwixt us and the savages. He charges that you are the favorite emissary of Monsieur Burnet and that it is largely due to you the Six Nations have latterly turned against us."
"But, Chevalier——"
"I will have no buts, Monsieur Ormerod. It is beyond reason that I should permit such a person as you to travel undisturbed in French territory."
"But is it French territory?" I demanded.