The eldest of a family of nineteen children born to a poor colonist, Baptiste had been obliged from early childhood to make his way through the world as best he could. When still a very young lad he had entered Le Ber’s service, where later he had shared the games and escapades of du Chesne and his cousins, the young le Moynes, teaching the boys the secrets of woodcraft and the delights of forest life. Afterwards he became a noted coureur de bois, wandering at will through the trackless woods of Canada, the great North-West and Louisiana, camping, hunting, fishing, fighting, everywhere renowned among white men and Indians for his unerring skill as a marksman and his extraordinary strength and courage. When severe laws were enacted against the bushrangers, prohibiting that lawless, delightful freedom of the wilderness to which his heart ever clung, Leroux again took service with the Le Ber family, for whom he felt an unswerving devotion. Among the colonists many marvellous tales concerning Bras de Fer’s adventures were told. Even allowing for the exaggeration of national pride, it must be admitted that many of these stories had a substantial foundation in fact. Once it happened that on the shores of Lake Champlain Baptiste and a younger brother were taken prisoners by the Iroquois. The Indians, in triumph at having secured so redoubtable an adversary, fastened their captives to two oaken stakes planted firmly in the ground. Fancying that Bras de Fer, who was much the stronger of the two, would endure torture the longer, they selected the brother as their first victim. A savage heated his hatchet red hot and applied it to the boy’s naked breast. Baptiste, resigned to his fate, had prepared to chant his death-song with a stoicism borrowed from his Iroquois foes, but the sight of his brother’s torture roused him to superhuman effort. “Forty thousand tribes of demons!” he shouted, bending himself double, and by a supreme effort bursting the bonds that held him; then tearing the stake out of the earth, with it he struck down four of the Iroquois in quick succession. The assault was so unexpected, and his attitude so terrifying, that the remainder of the party, believing in their consternation that they were attacked by a species of avenging Manitou, swiftly fled, leaving Baptiste and his brother to make their way home undisturbed. All Bras de Fer’s brave exploits, his renown, or the friendly consideration with which his employers treated him, seemed unavailing to give him advantage over his voluble rival. Baptiste was far too modest to boast of his own merits, and Jean was only too ready to vaunt imaginary virtues which he liberally attributed to himself. Nanon accepted the homage of both in a sharp, imperious, scornful way, never directly favoring either. Through all Baptiste endured the most hopeless jealousy of Jean’s fluent, deceiving tongue.