Mich' Masson--whose home, which served him best as a place to stay away from, was in the village of Grand Pré, far up on the Basin of Minas--had been Jean's close friend since early boyhood, in the days before Port Royal town had been captured by the English and found its name changed to Annapolis. He was a daring adventurer, hunter, woods-ranger, an implacable partisan of the French cause, and just now deeply interested in the traffic between Acadie and the new French fortress city of Louisburg--a traffic which the English Governor was angrily determined to break up. Mich' Masson could sail a ship as well as set a dead-fall or lay an ambush. He had kept bright in Jean's heart the flame of hatred against the English conquerors of Acadie. It was he who had come to the aid of Jean's shipbuilding from time to time, when timbers had to be put in place which were too heavy for one pair of hands to work with. It was, indeed, at his suggestion that Jean had finally decided to sell his cottage on the outskirts of Annapolis town, his scrap of upland with its apple trees in full bearing, his strip of rich dike-land with its apple trees in full bearing, his strip of rich dike-forbidden traffic--and to settle under the walls of Louisburg, where the flag he loved should always wave over his roof-tree. It was Mich' Masson who had shown Jean how by this course he could quickly grow rich, and make a home for Barbe which that somewhat disconcerting and incomprehensible maiden would not scorn to accept. Mich' Masson loved his own honor. He loved Jean. He hated the English. Jean's secret was safe with him.