contending doubts and hopes, and possibly with some of the mental vacillation, that was natural to her situation and sex.

Not so Paul; conceiving himself to have obtained the two things dearest to his heart, the possession of Ellen and a triumph over the sons of Ishmael, he now enacted his part, in the business of the moment, with as much coolness as though he was already leading his willing bride, from solemnising their nuptials before a border magistrate, to the security of his own dwelling. He had hovered around the moving family, during the tedious period of their weary march, concealing himself by day, and seeking interviews with his betrothed as opportunities offered, in the manner already described, until fortune and his own intrepidity had united to render him successful, at the very moment when he was beginning to despair, and he now cared neither for distance, nor violence, nor hardships. To his sanguine fancy and determined resolution all the rest was easily to be achieved. Such were his feelings, and such in truth they seemed to be. With his cap cast on one side, and whistling a low air, he thrashed among the bushes, in order to make a place suitable for the females to repose on, while, from time to time, he cast an approving glance at the agile form of Ellen, as she tripped past him, engaged in her own share of the duty.

“And so the Wolf-tribe of the Pawnees have buried the hatchet with their neighbours, the Konzas?” said the trapper, pursuing a discourse which he had scarcely permitted to flag, though it had been occasionally interrupted by the different directions with which he occasionally saw fit to interrupt it. (The reader will remember that, while he spoke to the native warrior in his own tongue, he necessarily addressed his white companions in English.) “The Loups and the light-fac’d Red-skins are again friends. Doctor, that is a tribe of which I’ll engage you’ve often read, and of which many a round lie has been whispered in the ears of the ignorant people, who live in the settlements. There was a story of a nation of Welshers, that liv’d hereaway in the prairies, and how they came into the land afore the uneasy minded man, who first let in the Christians to rob the heathens of their inheritance, had ever dreamt that the sun set on a country as big as that it rose from. And how they knew the white ways, and spoke with white tongues, and a thousand other follies and idle conceits.”

“Have I not heard of them?” exclaimed the naturalist, dropping a piece of jerked bison’s meat, which he was rather roughly discussing, at the moment. “I should be greatly ignorant not to have often dwelt with delight on so beautiful a theory, and one which so triumphantly establishes two positions, which I have often maintained are unanswerable, even without such living testimony in their favour—viz. that this continent can claim a more remote affinity with civilisation than the time of Columbus, and that colour is the fruit of climate and condition, and not a regulation of nature. Propound the latter question to this Indian gentleman, venerable hunter; he is of a reddish tint himself, and his opinion may be said to make us masters of the two sides of the disputed point.”

“Do you think a Pawnee is a reader of books, and a believer of printed lies, like the idlers in the towns?” retorted the old man, laughing. “But it may be as well to humour the likings of the man, which, after all, it is quite possible are neither more nor less than his natural gift, and therefore to be followed, although they may be pitied. What does my brother think? all whom he sees here have pale skins, but the Pawnee warriors are red; does he believe that man changes with the season, and that the son is not like his father?”

The young warrior regarded his interrogator for a moment with a steady and deliberating eye; then raising his finger upward, he answered with dignity —

“The Wahcondah pours the rain from his clouds; when he speaks, he shakes the hills; and the fire, which scorches the trees, is the anger of his eye; but he fashioned his children with care and thought. What he has thus made, never alters!”

“Ay, ’tis in the reason of natur’ that it should be so, Doctor,” continued the trapper, when he had interpreted this answer to the disappointed naturalist. The Pawnees are a wise and a great people, and I’ll engage they abound in many a wholesome and honest tradition. The hunters and trappers, that I sometimes see, speak of a great warrior of your race.”