My host made a wry smile and motioned to François to bring a third mug.
"Hola, Monsieur de Lery," he said. "This is a gallant young forest-runner, one Jean Courbevoir, who has come to tell me that charming idiot Alphonse de Tonty has been chased out of Le de Troit by the Messesagues. Jean, Monsieur de Lery is the King's engineer officer in Canada."
"Another case of a log fortification, I suppose," remarked de Lery sarcastically in a dry, crackling voice.
He paid no attention to the introduction to me.
"You gentlemen will never learn," he added.
"You must think we grow louis d'or instead of furs in Canada," growled Joncaire. "Be sure, we of the wilderness posts are the most anxious to have stone walls around us. Well, what headway have you made?"
"I have traced out the lines of the central mass," replied de Lery, taking a gulp of the wine. "Tomorrow I shall mark out a surrounding work of four bastions to encompass it."
"And you insist it shall be at the confluence of the river and the lake?"
"There can be no doubt 'tis the proper spot," declared de Lery didactically, "both from the engineering and the strategical points of view."
"But I am telling you—I, Louis Thomas de Joncaire, Sieur de Chabert, who have been thirty-five years in this accursed country—that if you do so you will have no sheltered anchorage for shipping. Moreover, you will sacrifice the buildings we have erected here."