“It can do no harm to employ him for one trip,” Sir John was saying.

“He hath taken the oath?” asks His Royal Highness.

“He is taking it to-night; but,” laughs Sir John, “we thought he was a good Englishman once before.”

“Your company used him ill.  You must keep him from going over to the French again.”

“Till he undo the evil he has done—­till he capture back all that he took from us—­then,” says Sir John cautiously, “then we must consider whether it be politic to keep a gamester in the company.”

“Anyway,” adds His Highness, “France will not take him back.”

And the door closed on the councillors while I awaited Radisson in the anteroom.  A moment later Pierre Radisson came out with eyes alight and face elate.

“I’ve signed to sail in three days,” he announced.  “Do you go with me or no?”

Two memories came back:  one of a face between a westering sun and a golden sea, and I hesitated; the other, of a cold, pallid, disdainful look from the royal box.

“I go.”

And entering the council chamber, I signed the papers without one glance at the terms.  Gentlemen sat all about the long table, and at the head was the governor of the company—­the Duke of York, talking freely with M. de Radisson.

My Lord Ashley would know if anything but furs grew in that wild New World.

“Furs?” says M. Radisson.  “Sir, mark my words, ’tis a world that grows empires—­also men,” with an emphasis which those court dandies could not understand.

But the wise gentlemen only smiled at M. Radisson’s warmth.

“If it grew good soldiers for our wars—­” begins one military gentleman.

“Aye,” flashes back M. Radisson ironically, “if it grows men for your wars and your butchery and your shambles!  Mark my words:  it is a land that grows men good for more than killing,” and he smiles half in bitterness.

“’Tis a prodigious expensive land in diplomacy when men like you are let loose in it,” remarks Arlington.

His Royal Highness rose to take his leave.

“You will present a full report to His Majesty at Oxford,” he orders M. Radisson in parting.

Then the council dispersed.

“Oxford,” says M. Radisson, as we picked our way home through the dark streets; “an I go to meet the king at Oxford, you will see a hornets’ nest of jealousy about my ears.”

I did not tell him of the double work implied in Sir John’s words with the prince, for Sir John Kirke was Pierre Radisson’s father-in-law.  At the door of the Star and Garter mine host calls out that a strange-looking fellow wearing a grizzled beard and with a wife as from foreign parts had been waiting all afternoon for me in my rooms.

“From foreign parts!” repeats M. Radisson, getting into a chair to go to Sir John’s house in Drury Lane.  “If they’re French spies, send them right about, Ramsay!  We’ve stopped gamestering!”