from dried reeds and bulrushes, affording no inconsiderable protection against the weather.  Inside the lodge, bales of goods and packages of provisions were quickly arranged in comfortable fashion.  Gaudy blankets were spread upon layers of soft skins of the buffalo.  The Indian woman had meantime struck a fire, whose faint blue smoke curled lakeward in the soft evening air.  Quickly, and with the system of experienced campaigners, the evening bivouac had been prepared; and wildly picturesque it must have seemed to a bystander, had there been indeed any possible spectator within many leagues.

Far enough was this from the turmoil of London, which Law and his companion had left nearly a year before; far enough still from the wild capital of New France, where they had spent the winter, after landing, as much by chance as through any plan, at the port of the St. Lawrence.  Ever a demon of unrest drove Law forward; ever there beckoned to him that irresistible West, of which he was one of the earliest to feel the charm.  Farther and farther westward, swift and swifter than ever the boats of the fur traders had made the journey before, he and his party, led by Du Mesne, the ex-galley-slave and wanderer whom Law had by chance met again, and gladly, at Montreal, had made the long and dangerous run up the lakes, past Michilimackinac, down the lake of Michiganon, headed toward the interior of a new continent which was then, as for generations after then, the land of wondrous distances, of grand enterprises, of magnificent promises and immense fulfilments.  The bales and bundles of this bivouac belonged to John Law, bought by gold from the gaming tables of Montreal and Quebec, and ventured in the one great hazard which appealed to him most irresistibly, the hazard of life and fortune in a far land, where he might live unneighbored, and where he might forget.  Gambler in England, gambler again in New France, now trading fur-merchant and voyageur, he was, as always, an adventurer.  Du Mesne and his hardy crew hailed him already as a new captain of the trails, a new coureur, won from the Old World by the savage witchery of the New.  He was their brother; and had he indeed owned longer years of training, his keenness of eye, his strength of arm, his tirelessness of limb could hardly have been greater than they seemed in his first voyage to the West.

    “Tous les printemps,
     Tant des nouvelles”

hummed Du Mesne, as he busied himself about the camp, casting the while a cautious eye to note the progress of the threatening storm.

“Tous les amants Changent des maitresses.  Jamais le bon vin n’endort—­ L’amour me reveille!”

“The best is before us now, Monsieur L’as,” said Du Mesne, joining Law, at length.  “Assuredly the best is always that which is ahead and which is unknown; but in point of fact the hardest of our journey is over, for henceforth we may stretch our legs ashore, and hunt and fish, and make good camps for madame, who, as we both perceive, is much in need of ease and care.  We shall make all safe and comfortable for this night, doubt not.