from the half-dressed gentlemen of France."

Dark looks followed this bold speech, which cut but too closely to the
quick of English pride. Pembroke quelled the incipient outcry with
calmer speech.

"Peace, friends," said he. "'Tis not arms we argue here, after all. We
are but students at the feet of Monsieur du Mesne, who hath returned
from foreign parts. Prithee, sir, tell us more."

"Tell ye more--and if I did, would ye believe it? What if I tell ye of
great rivers far to the west of the Ottawa; of races as strange to my
princess's people as we are to them; of streams whose sands run in gold,
where diamonds and sapphires are to be picked up as ye like? If I told
ye, would ye believe?"

The martial hearts and adventurous souls of the circle about him began
to show in the heightened color and closer crowding of the young men to
the table. Silence fell upon the group.

"Ye know nothing, in this old rotten world, of what there is yet to be
found in America," cried Du Mesne. "For myself, I have been no farther
than the great falls of the Ontoneagrea--a mere trifle of a cataract,
gentlemen, into which ye might pitch your tallest English cathedral and
sink it beyond its pinnacle with ease. Yet I have spoke with the holy
fathers who have journeyed far to the westward, even to the vast
Messasebe, which is well known to run into the China sea upon some
far-off coast not yet well charted. I have also read the story of
Sagean, who was far to the west of that mighty river. Did not the latter
see and pursue and kill in fair fight the giant unicorn, fabled of