The two riders emerged from the forest, and drew up for a minute in front of the hostelry of the Crown of France, to water their horses at the long trough before the door and inform Dame Bédard, who ran out to greet them, that Master Pothier was following with his ambling nag at a gentle pace, as befitted the gravity of his profession.
"Oh! Master Pothier never fails to find his way to the Crown of France; but won't your Honors take a cup of wine? The day is hot and the road dusty. 'A dry rider makes a wet nag,'" added the Dame, with a smile, as she repeated an old saying, brought over with the rest of the butin in the ships of Cartier and Champlain.
The gentlemen bowed their thanks, and as Philibert looked up, he saw pretty Zoë Bédard poring over a sheet of paper bearing a red seal, and spelling out the crabbed law text of Master Pothier. Zoë, like other girls of her class, had received a tincture of learning in the day schools of the nuns; but, although the paper was her marriage contract, it puzzled her greatly to pick out the few chips of plain sense that floated in the sea of legal verbiage it contained. Zoë, with a perfect comprehension of the claims of meum and tuum, was at no loss, however, in arriving at a satisfactory solution of the true merits of her matrimonial contract with honest Antoine La Chance.
She caught the eye of Philibert, and blushed to the very chin as she huddled away the paper and returned the salute of the two handsome gentlemen, who, having refreshed their horses, rode off at a rapid trot down the great highway that led to the city.
Babet Le Nocher, in a new gown, short enough to reveal a pair of shapely ankles in clocked stockings and well-clad feet that would have been the envy of many a duchess, sat on the thwart of the boat knitting. Her black hair was in the fashion recorded by the grave Peter Kalm, who, in his account of New France, says, "The peasant women all wear their hair in ringlets, and nice they look!"
"As I live!" exclaimed she to Jean, who was enjoying a pipe of native tobacco, "here comes that handsome officer back again, and in as great a hurry to return as he was to go up the highway!"
"Ay, ay, Babet! It is plain to see he is either on the King's errand or his own. A fair lady awaits his return in the city, or one has just dismissed him where he has been! Nothing like a woman to put quicksilver in a man's shoes--eh! Babet?"