My uncle came stalking forth, his lips pale with rage. He had blazed
out ere I could explain one word.

"Have I put bread in thy mouth, Ramsay Stanhope, that thou shouldst
turn traitor? Viper and imp of Satan!" he shouted, shaking his
clinched fist in my face. "Was it not enough that thou wert utterly
bound in iniquity without persecuting the Lord's anointed?"

I took a breath.

"Where is Balaam?" he demanded, seizing me roughly.

"Sir," said I, "for leaving the room without leave, I pray you to flog
me as I deserve. As for the horse, he is safe and I hope far away
under the gentleman I helped down from the attic."

His face fell a-blank. M. Radisson dismounted laughing.

"Nay, nay, Eli Kirke, I protest 'twas to the lad's credit. 'Twas this
way, kinsman," and he told all, with many a strange-sounding, foreign
expression that must have put the Puritan's nose out of joint, for Eli
Kirke began blowing like a trumpet.

Then out comes Aunt Ruth to insist that M. Radisson share a haunch of
venison at our noonday meal.

And how I wish I could tell you of that dinner, and of all that M.
Radisson talked; of captivity among Iroquois and imprisonment in Spain
and wars in Turkey; of his voyage over land and lake to a far north
sea, and of the conspiracy among merchant princes of Quebec to ruin