uld scarce believe. We have travelled far from the lands
of the south to join our brethren of the English race. We heard
rumours of wars cruel and bloody. Yet it seemed to us too strange a
thing to believe that here, amid the hostile, savage Indians, white
man could wage war with white man, and take the bloody heathen man
as his ally, instead of the brother who bears the name of Christ!"

Humphrey looked with some wonder and fascination into the face of
the youth who spoke. It was a refined and beautiful face,
notwithstanding the evidences of long exposure to sun and wind. The
features were finely cut, sensitive and expressive, and the eyes
were very luminous in their glance, and possessed strangely
penetrating powers. In stature the young man was almost as tall as
Humphrey, but of a much slighter build; yet he was wiry and
muscular, as could well be seen, and plainly well used to the life
of the wild woodlands. His dress was that of the backwoods, dressed
deerskin being the chief material used. Both travellers wore
moccasins on their feet, and carried the usual weapons of offence
and defence.

Yet Humphrey felt as though this man was in some sort different
from those he had met in the woods at rare times when out hunting.
His voice, his words, his phraseology seemed in some sort strange,
and he asked him wonderingly:

"From whence are you, friends?"

"From the land of the far south--from the rolling plains of the
giant Mississippi, that vast river of which perchance you have
heard?"

"Ay, verily," answered Humphrey, with a touch of bitterness in his
tone. "I have heard of that great river, which the French King
claims to have discovered, and which they say he will guard with a
chain of forts right away from Canada, and will thus command all
the New World of the West, pinning us English within the limits of
that portion of land lying betwixt the ocean and the range of the
Allegheny Mountains," and Humphrey waved his hand in that
direction, and looked questioningly at the men before him.

He had an impression that all who came from the far south, from the
colony of Louisiana, as he had heard it called, must be in some
sort French subjects. And yet these men spoke his own tongue, and
seemed to be friends and brothers.

"That was the chimera of the French Monarch more than a century
ago. Methinks it is little nearer its accomplishment now than when
our forefathers, acting as pioneers, made a small settlement in a