Radisson, the boy, slim and swarth as an Indian, running a mad race for life through mountain torrents that would throw his savage pursuers off the trail—we can imagine; but not Radisson running from a London bailiff. Leading flotillas of fur brigades up the Ottawa across Lake Superior to the Great Northwest—he is a familiar figure, but not stroked and petted and patronized by the frowzy duchesses of Charles the Second’s slovenly court. Yet from the time Radisson ceased to come to Hudson Bay during Iberville’s raids, he drops as completely out of history as if he had been lost in Milton’s Serbonian Bog. One historian describes him as assassinated in Quebec, another as dying destitute. Both statements are guesses, but from the dusty records of the Hudson’s Bay Company—many of them undisturbed since Radisson’s time—can be gleaned a complete account of the game pathfinder’s life to the time of his death. The very front page of the first minute book kept by the Company, contains account of Radisson—an order for Alderman Portman to pay Radisson and Groseillers £5 a year for expenses—chiefly wine and fresh fruit, as later entries show. There were present at this meeting of the Company, adventurers of as romantic a glamor as Robert Louis Stevenson’s heroes or a Captain Kidd. There was the Earl of Craven, married to the Queen of Bohemia. There was Ashley, ambitious for the earldom that came later, and with the reputation that “he would rob the devil, himself, and the church altars.” It was Ashley, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, who charged a bribe of £100 to every man appointed in the government services, though he concealed his peculations under stately manners and gold lace. Notoriety was the stock in trade of the court beauties at that time, and Ashley’s wife earned public notice by ostentatiously driving in a glass coach that was forever splintering in collision with some other carriage or going to bits over the clumsy cobblestones. Old Sir George Carterett of New Jersey was now treasurer of the Navy. Sir John Robinson was commander of the Tower. Griffith was known as the handsome dandy of court balls. Sir John Kirke, the Huguenot, was a royal pensioner of fighting blood, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. The meeting of the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers was held at the house of Sir Robert Viner, Lord Mayor of London, renowned for the richest wife, the finest art galleries, the handsomest conservatories in England. It was to Viner’s that Charles the Second came with his drunken crew to fiddle and muddle and run the giddy course, that danced the Stuart’s off the throne. Mr. Young was a man of fashion as well as a merchant, so famous for amateur acting that he often took the place of the court actors at a moment’s notice. [Illustration: Radisson’s House on Seething Lane in 1679. (1) St. Olave Hart’s Church; (2) Radisson’s House: (3) Pepys’ House. ]