Heralds of Empire Part 49

But with the swift intuition of the lonely woman's loveless heart, Queen Catherine read in my face what a poor trader might not speak.

She reached her hand to me, and when I would have saluted it like any dutiful subject, she took my hand in hers and placed Hortense's hand in mine.

Then there was a great laughing and hand-shaking and protesting, with the courtiers thronging round.

"Ha, Radisson," Barillon was saying, "you not only steal our forts--you must rifle the court and run off with the queen's maid!"

"And there will be two marriages at the sailor's wedding," said the queen.

It was Hortense's caprice that both marriages be deferred till we reached Boston Town, where she must needs seek out the old Puritan divine whom I had helped to escape so many years ago.

Before I lay down my pen, I would that I could leave with you a picture of M. Radisson, the indomitable, the victorious, the dauntless, living in opulence and peace!

But my last memory of him, as our s.h.i.+p sheered away for Boston Town, is of a grave man standing on the quay denouncing princes' promises and gazing into s.p.a.ce.

M. Radisson lived to serve the Fur Company for many a year as history tells; but his service was as the flight of a great eagle, harried by a mult.i.tude of meaner birds.