acknowledgment of the presence of Dame Opportunity, and my admission
that I would like to impress her; to draw her eye in my direction.
Surely that is laudable, monsieur."

Cadillac laughed. His tempers were the ruffle of a passing breeze upon
deep water. "So you think that I swagger to meet opportunity? Well,
if I do, I get but little out of it. Sometimes I push myself near
enough to pluck at the sleeve of the dame; oftener she passes me by."

"Yet she gave you this key to an empire," I suggested. I had been
rude, and I repented it, and more than that, there was something in the
man that tempted me to offer him flattery even as I desire to give
sweets to an engaging child.

But this cajolery he swept away with a fling of his heavy arm. "The
key to an empire!" he echoed contemptuously. "They are fine words, and
the mischief is that they are true. Yet food in my stomach, and money
in my pocket, would mean more to me just now. I must speak to this
Indian. Will you wait for me, monsieur? I have business with you."

I bowed, and resumed my walk. "The key to an empire!" I said my own
words over, and could have blushed for their tone of bombast. They
were true, but they sounded false, I looked at my surroundings, and
marveled that a situation that was of real dignity could wear so mean a
garb. The sandy cove where I stood was on the mainland, and sheltered
four settlements. Behind lay the forest; in front stretched Lake
Huron, a waterway that was our only link with the men and nations we
had left behind. The settlements were contiguous in body, but even my
twenty-four hours' acquaintance had shown me that they were leagues
apart in mind. There were a French fort, a Jesuit convent, a village