That fair land was a fit spot whereon the most luxurious of civilizations should touch and affiliate with savages of the wilderness. Up the limpid green river the Lachine Rapids showed their teeth with audible roar. From that point Mount Royal could be seen rising out of mists and stretching its hind-quarters westward like some vast mastodon. But to Tonty only its front appeared, a globe dipped in autumn colors and wearing plumes of vapor. The sky of this new hemisphere rose in unmeasured heights which the eye followed in vain; there seemed no zenith to the swimming blinding azure.
A row of booths for merchants had been built all along the outside of Montreal’s palisades, and traders were thus early setting their goods in array.
At the north extremity of the town that huge stone windmill built by the seigniors for defence, cast a long dewy shadow toward the west. Its loopholes showed like dark specks on the body of masonry.
Sun-sparkles on the river were no more buoyant and changeable than the child at Tonty’s side. Dimples came and went in her cheeks. Her blood was stirred by the swarming life around her.
“Monsieur,” she confided to her uncle’s lieutenant, “I am meditating something very wicked.”
“Certainly that is impossible, mademoiselle,” said Tonty, accommodating his step to her reluctant gait.
“I am meditating on not going back to the convent.”
“Where would you go, mademoiselle?”
“Everywhere, to see things.”
“But my orders are to escort you to the nuns. You would disgrace me as a soldier.”