THE THREAT OF A RENEGADE Iberville was used to the society of women.

Even as a young lad, his father's notable place in the colony, and the freedom and gaiety of life in Quebec and Montreal, had drawn upon him a notice which was as much a promise of the future as an accent of the present.

And yet, through all of it, he was ever better inspired by the grasp of a common soldier, who had served with Carignan-Salieres, or by the greeting and gossip of such woodsmen as Du Lhut, Mantet, La Durantaye, and, most of all, his staunch friend Perrot, chief of the coureurs du bois.

Truth is, in his veins was the strain of war and adventure first and before all.

Under his tutor, the good Pere Dollier de Casson, he had never endured his classics, save for the sake of Hector and Achilles and their kind; and his knowledge of English, which his father had pressed him to learn,--for he himself had felt the lack of it in dealings with Dutch and English traders,--only grew in proportion as he was given Shakespeare and Raleigh to explore.
Soon the girl laughed up at him.