[II.]
A TRAVELLED FRIAR.
The lower room of the officers’ lodging was filled with the light of a fire. To the hearth was drawn a half-circle of men, their central figure being a Récollet friar, so ragged and weather-stained that he seemed some ecclesiastical scarecrow placed there to excite laughter and tears in his beholders.
This group arose as Jacques le Ber entered with his daughter, and were eager to be of service to her.
“There is a fire lighted in the hall upstairs by which mademoiselle can sit,” said the sergeant of the fort.
Le Ber conducted her to the top of a staircase which ascended the side of the room before he formally greeted any one present. He returned, unwinding his saturated wool wrappings and pulling off his cap of beaver skin. He was a swarthy man with anxious and calculating wrinkles between his eyebrows.
“Do I see Father Hennepin?” exclaimed Le Ber, squaring his mouth, “or is this a false image of him set before me?”
“You see Father Hennepin,” the friar responded with dignity,—”explorer, missionary among the Sioux, and sufferer in the cause of religion.”