These were Radisson’s associates, the Frenchman’s friends when he came to London fresh from the wilderness in his thirtieth year with the exploration of the North and the West to his credit. None knew better than he, the money value of his discoveries. And Radisson knew the way to this land. By the lifting of his hand, he could turn this wealth into the coffers of the court adventurers. If the fur trade was a gamble—and everything on earth was gamble in the reign of Charles—Radisson held the winning cards. The gamesters of that gambling age gathered round him like rooks round a pigeon, to pick his pockets—politely and according to the codes of good breeding, of course—and to pump his brain of every secret, that could be turned into pounds sterling—politely, also, of course. Very generous, very pleasant, very suave of fair promises were the gay adventurers, but withal slippery as the finery of their silk ruffles or powdered periwigs. Did Radisson keep his head? Steadier heads have gone giddy with the sudden plunge from wilderness ways to court pomp. Sir James Hayes, Prince Rupert’s secretary, declares in a private document that the French explorer at this time “_deluded_ the daughter of Sir John Kirke into secretly marrying him,” so that Radisson may have been caught in the madcap doings of the court dissipations when no rake’s progress was complete unless he persuaded some errant damsel to jump over the back wall and elope, though there was probably no hindrance in the world to ordinary lovers walking openly out of the front door and being married properly. The fact that Radisson was a penniless adventurer and a Catholic, while his bride was the daughter of a rich Puritan, may have been the explanation of the secrecy, if indeed, there is any truth at all in the rumor repeated by Hayes.