knowledge of the French language. He often came to the fort begging drink and tobacco, but he shunned the Jesuits, of whose rigid virtue he stood in horror. But one day, about this time, Pierre incurred the displeasure of the French commandant, and the fort was closed against him. Repulsed by a young squaw whom he wanted to make his wife, and unfitted by his French education for the hard and precarious life of a hunter, he went to the priests for food and shelter. Le Jeune hailed him as a gift from heaven in answer to his prayers. He installed the poor wretch in the mission-house, begged for him at the fort a suit of cast-off clothes, and set zealously to work to learn from him the mysteries of the Algonquin language. "How thankful I am," wrote Le Jeune, "to those who gave me tobacco last year! At every difficulty I give my master a piece of it to make him more attentive." The terribly severe winter was passed in studies such as these, in practising with snow-shoes, and teaching Indian children. Bands of savages often encamped near the mission-house in the course of their hunting journeys, and Le Jeune, whenever they appeared, would take his stand at the door and ring a bell. The children would gather round him, and leading them into the refectory, which also served as a school-room, he would teach them the Pater, Ave, and Credo, with an Indian prayer which he had composed with the assistance of Pierre, show them how to make the sign of the cross, and explain portions of the catechism. The exercises closed with the singing of the Lord's prayer in Algonquin rhymes, and after that each pupil was rewarded with a porringer of peas. As spring approached, Pierre began to bethink himself of the fasting and prayers of Lent, and ran off one day to a party of Englishmen, at Tadoussac, where he drowned in liquor the small remnant of his Christianity. Then he joined his two brothers, one a famous hunter named Mestigoit, the other the most noted sorcerer or "medicine-man" of the tribe. {195}