“Potatoes,” answered the lawyer-gardener.  “The Peruvian root they are planting in Ireland.”

“But you do not expect to get a crop this year—­and in this climate?”

“I don’t expect anything at all.  I am making the experiment.  If they come up, good; if they do not, I have seed enough for next year.”

The potatoes came up.  It was an unusually hot summer, and the situation was favorable.  If Lescarbot had known the habits of the vegetable he might not have thought of putting them into the ground on the last day of July, but they grew and flourished, and their odd ivory-and-gold blossoms were charming.  Lescarbot worked all day in the bracing sunlit air, and now and then he hoed and transplanted by moonlight.  In the evening he read, wrote, or planned out the next day’s program.

September came, with cool bright days and a hint of frost at night; the lawyer marshalled his forces and harvested the crops.  The storehouses, already stocked with Pontgrave’s abundant provision, were filled to overflowing, and they had to dig a makeshift cellar or root-pit under a rough shelter for the last of their produce.  The potatoes were carefully bestowed in huge hampers provided by Membertou’s people, who were greatly interested in all that the white men did.  Old Jacqueline had said that they needed “room to breathe,” and Lescarbot was taking no chances on this unknown American product.

October came; the Indians showed the white men how to grind corn, and the carpenters planned a water-mill to be constructed in the spring, to take the place of the tedious hand-mill worked by two men.  Wild geese flew overhead, recalling to the Frenchmen the legends of Saint Gabriel’s hounds.  The forests robed themselves in hues like those of a priceless Kashmir shawl, and the squirrels, martens, beavers, otters, weasels, which the hunters brought in were in their winter coats.  But the exploring party had not returned.  Lescarbot, who had occupied spare moments in preparing a surprise for them when they did return, and carefully drilled the men in their parts, began to be secretly anxious.  But on the morning of November 14, old Membertou, who had appointed himself an informal sentinel to patrol the waters near the fort, appeared with the news that the chiefs were coming back.

All was excitement in a moment, although Lescarbot privately had to admit that he could not even see a sail, to say nothing of recognizing the boat or its occupants.  But the long-sighted old sagamore was right.  The party of adventurers, their craft considerably the worse for the journey, steering with a pair of oars in place of a rudder, reached the landing-place and battered, weary and dilapidated, came up to the fort.  They were surprised and disappointed to see no one about except a few curious Indians peeping from the woods.