ad slowly, while
he watched the upward flight of a ring of white smoke that had just
issued from his lips.

"Well, I won't leave him to _that_," continued the youth, with sudden
energy of manner and look, "as long as my name is Lawrence. You know
that nothin' would please me more than goin' to explore the wilderness
with you, father; but if Swiftarrow is to be left behind, there shall be
no pioneering for me. Besides, three are better than two on such a
trip, and the Injin will be sure to keep the pot full, no matter what
sort o' country we may have to pass through, for he's a dead shot wi'
the gun as well as wi' the bow."

"I daresay you're right, lad," replied Reuben, in a tone of one who
muses. "There's room in the canoe for three, and it's not unlikely that
the Injin would go south to the settlement, for he is a lonely man since
his poor mother died. I do believe that it was nothin' but his
extraor'nar' love for that old 'ooman that kep' him from goin' to the
dogs. Leastwise it was that kep' him from goin' to the settlement,
which is much the same thing, for Swiftarrow can't resist fire-water.
Yes, lad, you're right--so we'll take him with us. As you say, three
are better than two on such a v'yage."

Some weeks after the foregoing conversation the pioneers arrived at the
northern end of that great inland sea, Lake Superior, which, being
upwards of four hundred miles long, and one hundred and seventy-five
miles broad, presents many of the features of Ocean itself. This end of
the lake was, at the time we write of, and still is, an absolute
wilderness, inhabited only by scattered tribes of Indians, and almost
untouched by the hand of the white man, save at one spot, where the
fur-traders had planted an isolated establishment. At this point in the
wild woods the representatives of the fur-traders of Canada were wont to
congregate for the settlement of their affairs in the spring of every
year, and from this point also trading-parties were despatched in canoes
into the still more remote parts of the great northern wilderness,
whence they returned with rich cargoes of furs received from the "red
men" in exchange for powder and shot, guns, hatchets, knives, cloth,
twine, fish-hooks, and such articles as were suited to the tastes and
wants of a primitive and wandering people.

Here Reuben Guff and his son found Swiftarrow, as they had expected, and
proposed to him that he should accompany them on their voyage n