At that moment there came a knock, and in an instant the coureur du bois had caught the hands of the young man, and was laughing up in his face.
"By the good Sainte Anne, but you make Nick Perrot a dwarf, dear monsieur!"
"Well, well, little man, I'll wager neither the great abbe here nor myself could bring you lower than you stand, for all that. Comrade, 'tis kind of you to come so prompt."
"What is there so good as the face of an old friend!" said Perrot, with a little laugh. "You will drink with a new, and eat with a coming friend, and quarrel with either; but 'tis only the old friend that knows the old trail, and there's nothing to a man like the way he has come in the world."
"The trail of the good comrade," said the priest softly.
"Ah!" responded Perrot, "I remember, abbe, when we were at the Portneuf you made some verses of that—eh! eh! but they were good!"
"No fitter time," said Iberville; "come, abbe, the verses!"
"No, no; another day," answered the priest.
It was an interesting scene. Perrot, short, broad, swarthy, dressed in rude buckskin gaudily ornamented, bandoleer and belt garnished with silver,—a recent gift of some grateful merchant, standing between the powerful black-robed priest and this gallant sailor-soldier, richly dressed in fine skins and furs, with long waving hair, more like a Viking than a man of fashion, and carrying a courtly and yet sportive look, as though he could laugh at the miseries of the sinful world. Three strange comrades were these, who knew each other so far as one man can know another, yet each knowing from a different stand-point. Perrot knew certain traits of Iberville of which De Casson was ignorant, and the abbe knew many depths which Perrot never even vaguely plumbed. And yet all could meet and be free in speech, as though each read the other thoroughly.
"Let us begin," said Iberville. "I want news of New York."