I thank you for it. It has
saved us much trouble. A pledge to the pleasure--and the length--of
your stay, gentlemen," and they stand to the toast, M. de Radisson
smiling at the lights in his wine.
But we all knew very well what such welcome meant. 'Twas Radisson's
humour to play the host that night, but the runaway lieutenant was a
prisoner in our guard-house.
CHAPTER XVI
WE SEEK THE INLANDERS
In the matter of fighting, I find small difference between white-men
and red. Let the lust of conquest but burn, the justice of the quarrel
receives small thought. Your fire-eating prophet cares little for the
right of the cause, provided the fighter come out conqueror; and many a
poet praises only that right which is might over-trampling weakness. I
have heard the withered hag of an Indian camp chant as spirited
war-song as your minstrels of butchery; but the strange thing of it is,
that the people, who have taken the sword in a wantonness of conquest,
are the races that have been swept from the face of the earth like dead
leaves before the winter blast; but the people, who have held immutably
by the power of right, which our Lord Christ set up, the meek and the
peace-makers and the children of God, these are they that inherit the
earth.
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