And all the while he was smiling as though my going to the court were an odd notion.

“If I could but find a master,” I lamented.

“Come to me of an evening,” says M. Picot.  “I’ll teach you, and you can tell me of the fur trade.”

You may be sure I went as often as ever I could.  M. Picot took me upstairs to a sort of hunting room.  It had a great many ponderous oak pieces carved after the Flemish pattern and a few little bandy-legged chairs and gilded tables with courtly scenes painted on top, which he said Mistress Hortense had brought back as of the latest French fashion.  The blackamoor drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world, worldling practices were a sad offence to New England.  Shoving the furnishings aside, M. Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson.  Carte and tierce, low carte and flanconnade, he taught me with many a ringing clash of steel till beads were dripping from our brows like rain-drops.

“Bravo!” shouted M. Picot in a pause.  “Are you son o’ the Stanhope that fought on the king’s side?”

I said that I was.

“I knew the rascal that got the estate from the king,” says M. Picot, with a curious look from Hortense to me; and he told me of Blood, the freebooter, who stole the king’s crown but won royal favour by his bravado and entered court service for the doing of deeds that bore not the light of day.

Nightly I went to the French doctor’s house, and I learned every wicked trick of thrust and parry that M. Picot knew.  Once when I bungled a foul lunge, which M. Picot said was a habit of the infamous Blood, his weapon touched my chest, and Mistress Hortense uttered a sharp cry.

“What—­what—­what!” exclaims M. Picot, whirling on her.

“’Twas so real,” murmurs Hortense, biting her lip.

After that she sat still enough.  Then the steel was exchanged for cards; and when I lost too steadily M. Picot broke out:  “Pish, boy, your luck fails here!  Hillary, child, go practise thy songs on the spinet.”

Or:  “Hortense, go mull us a smack o’ wine!”

Or:  “Ha, ha, little witch!  Up yet?  Late hours make old ladies.”

And Hortense must go off, so that I never saw her alone but once. 
’Twas the night before I was to leave for the trade.

The blackamoor appeared to say that Deliverance Dobbins was “a-goin’ in fits” on the dispensary floor.

“Faith, doctor,” said I, “she used to have dumps on our turnstile.”

“Yes,” laughed Hortense, “small wonder she had dumps on that turnstile!  Ramsay used to tilt her backward.”

M. Picot hastened away, laughing.  Hortense was in a great carved high-back chair with clumsy, wooden cupids floundering all about the tall head-rest.  Her face was alight in soft-hued crimson flaming from an Arabian cresset stuck in sockets against the Flemish cabinet.