“Joutel, what are you writing there?”
“Monsieur the Abbé, I was merely setting down a few words about this Fort St. Louis of the Illinois in which we are sheltered. But my candle is so nearly burned out I will put the leaves aside.”
“You were writing nothing else?” insisted La Salle’s brother, setting his shoulders against the storehouse door.
“Not a word, monsieur.”
The Abbé’s ragged cassock scarcely showed such wear as his face, which the years that had handled him could by no means have cut into such deep grooves or moulded into such ghastly hillocks of features.
“I cannot sleep to-night, Joutel,” said the Abbé Cavelier.
“I thought you were made very comfortable in the house,” remarked Joutel.
“What can make me comfortable now?”
They stood still, saying nothing, while a candle waved its feeble plume with uncertainty over its marsh of tallow, making their huge shadows stagger over log-wall or floor or across piled merchandise. One side of the room was filled with stacked buffalo hides, on which Joutel, nightly, took the complete rest he had earned by long tramping in southern woods.