"Mon Dieu! I could weep at the thought of the time I have spent in this place of devils; and my children will never know the country that their father came from!"
Ta-wan-ne-ars would have followed us indoors, but Joncaire turned and pushed him down on the doorstep.
"Sit, sit," he said kindly in a tongue which Ta-wan-ne-ars afterward told me was the Messesague dialect. "You shall have your food here."
And to me—
"Our own Indians I will tolerate when I must, but I want no strange savages stealing my stores."
"Monsieur has a family here?" I asked as we took our seats at a rough table in the front room.
"Here! Never! Although I have one son who will soon be able to carry on his father's work."
"One son? That is too bad. Now in Picardy——"
"Mort de ma vie! Would you talk to me of your Picards! Young man, each Autumn that I return to Montreal—and it has been many Autumns, let me tell you—Madame de Joncaire has a new little one to introduce to me."
His face softened.