“For your pains, I will dismiss Jolycœur to-day, and take Liotot with me.”
“And will you come here as soon as you dismiss him and let my men prepare your food?”
“Willingly. Fort Frontenac, with my rights in it denied, is no halting place for me. To-morrow I set out again to France, and you to the fort on the Illinois. But, Tonty—”
La Salle’s face relaxed into tenderness as he laid his hands upon his friend’s shoulders. The Italian’s ardent temperament was the only agent which ever fused and made facile of tongue and easy of confidence that man of cold reserve known as La Salle. The Italian guessed what he had to say. They both glanced at Barbe and flushed. But the nebulous thought surrounding the name of Jeanne le Ber was never condensed to spoken word.
Tonty’s sentinel opened the chapel door and broke up this council. He said an Indian stood there with him demanding to be admitted.
[VII.]
AN ADOPTION.
“What does he want?” inquired Tonty.
“He is determined to speak with you, Monsieur de Tonty, from what I can gather out of his words.”