“Here are news,” smiled His Majesty.  “Your maid of the north is Osmond’s daughter!  The lands young Lieutenant Blood wants are hers!”

At that were more looks among the ladies.

“And faith, the lieutenant asks for her as well as the lands,” said the king.

Hortense had turned very white and moved a little forward.

“We may not disturb our loyal subject’s possession.  What does Osmond’s daughter say?” questioned the king.

Then Hortense took her fate in her hands.

“Your Majesty,” she said, “if Osmond’s daughter did not want the lands, it would not be necessary to disturb the lieutenant.”

“And who would find a husband for a portionless bride?” asked King Charles.

“May it please Your Majesty,” began Hortense; but the words trembled unspoken on her lips.

There was a flutter among the ladies.  The queen turned and rose.  A half-startled look of comprehension came to her face.  And out stepped Mistress Hortense from the group behind.

“Your Majesties,” she stammered, “I do not want the lands——­”

“Nor the lieutenant,” laughed the king.

“Your Majesties,” she said.  She could say no more.

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 ship sheered away for Boston Town, is of a grave man standing on the quay denouncing princes’ promises and gazing into space.

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 multitude of meaner birds.