sorts, and could see no especial good in warning the
game.

'What an erect fellow he is, and as taciturn as a mole!' quoth the
lively Argent. 'I hope we shall meet with some of his step-relations,
the Indians; I've quite a passion for savage life, that is, to look at.
Last winter's leave I made some excursions on Lake Simcoe; the islands
there are all savage territory, belonging to the Ojibbeways. Poor
fellows, they're dying out--every year becoming fewer; yet one can
discern the relics of a magnificent race. Red cunning has been no match
for white wisdom, that's certain.'

Arthur was a willing listener to many stories about his friend's
excursions; and so the time was wiled away as they drove deeper into the
recesses of the forest, even to the extreme end of all concession lines.

Here was Ina's wigwam, on the edge of a small pond, which was closely
hedged in with pines. Wasting no words, he merely stepped back to
unbuckle the shaggy pony, and at the ensuing noonday meal Arthur for the
first time tasted the wilderness preserve called 'pemmican.' It was not
unlike what housewives at home denominate 'collar,' he thought, cutting
in compact slices of interwoven fat and lean.

'How is it made, Argent?'

'I believe the dried venison is pounded between stones till the fibres
separate, and in that powdery state is mixed with hot melted buffalo's
fat, and sewed up in bags of skin. They say it is most nutritive--a
pound equal to four pounds of ordinary meat. A sort of concentrated
nourishment, you see.'

'What are those blackish things hanging up in the smoke, I wonder?'

'Beavers' tails, captured in the creeks off the lake, I suppose; capital
food, tasting like bacon, but a little gristly.'

'And does the fellow live here, all alone?' A quick and perhaps
unfriendly glance of Ina's black eyes proved that he was not deaf,
though by choice dumb.

'Well, I suppose so, this year; but he's a great rover. Was with me on
the Simcoe last year. I never met such a lover of the chase for its own
sake. His forefathers' instincts are rampant in him. Ina, have we any
chance of a moose?'

The trapper shook his grisly head. 'Only on the hard wood ridges all
winter,' he answered; 'they "yard" whar maples grows, for they live on
the tops and bark. Bariboos come down here, mostly.'

What these were, Arthur had soon an opportunity of knowing. Ina kindled
into a different being when the hunting instinct came over him. Every
sense was