He told his story curtly.
Father Gibault, he said, had sent him to ask M.Roussillon to come to the river house, as he had news of great importance to communicate.
"Ah, well, Oncle Jazon, we'll have a nip of brandy together before we go," said the host.
"Why, yes, jes' one agin' the broilin' weather," assented Oncle Jazon; "I don't mind jes' one." "A very rich friend of mine in Quebec gave me this brandy, Oncle Jazon," said M.Roussillon, pouring the liquor with a grand flourish; "and I thought of you as soon as I got it.

Now, says I to myself, if any man knows good brandy when he tastes it, it's Oncle Jazon, and I'll give him a good chance at this bottle just the first of all my friends." "It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very delicious." He spoke French with a curious accent, having spent long years with English-speaking frontiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so that their lingo had become his own.
As they walked side by side down the way to the river house they looked like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather-tanned manhood; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a superb beard.

They did not know that they were going down to help dedicate the great Northwest to freedom..