on his return from service in the navy, he asked her, almost without
warning; and with a touch of her old demureness and gaiety she had put
him off, bidding him go win his laurels as commander. He was then
commissioned for Hudson's Bay, and expected, on his return, to proceed
to the Spaniards' country with William Phips, if that brave gentleman
succeeded with the king or his nobles. He had gone north with his ship,
and, as we have seen, when Iberville started on that almost impossible
journey, was preparing to return to Boston. As he waited Iberville came
on.




CHAPTER X

QUI VIVE!

From Land's End to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from
Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more,
however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater
hardships also then. But weighed against the greater hardships there was
a bolder temper and a more romantic spirit.

How strange and severe a journey it was, only those can tell who have
travelled those wastes, even in these later days, when paths have been
beaten down from Mount Royal to the lodges of the North. When they
started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound
their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles,
the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind him.
At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the north-