but to-day manhood has come. Father, what is a dauphin?"

The chief made no answer.

"What is a temple? Is it a church, like ours at St. Regis?"

"Ask the priest."

"Do you know what Bourbon is, father,--particularly a Bourbon ear?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"But how could I have a Bourbon ear if it didn't concern me?"

"Who said you had such an ear?"

"Madame de Ferrier."

The chief grunted.

"At least she told De Chaumont," I repeated exactly, "I was the boy she
saw in London, that her father said had all the traits of the Bourbons.
Where is London?"

The chief paddled without replying. Finding him so ignorant on all
points of the conversation, or so determined to put me down, I gazed
awhile at our shadow gliding in the water, and then began again.

"Father, do you happen to know who Bonaparte is?"

This time he answered.

"Bonaparte is a great soldier."

"Is he a white man or an Indian?"

"He is a Frenchman."

I meditated on the Frenchmen I dimly remembered about St. Regis. They
were undersized fellows, very apt to weep when their emotions were
stirred. I could whip them all.

"Did he ever come to St. Regis?"

The chief again grunted.

"Does France come to St. Regis?" he retorted with an impatient question.

"What is France, father?"

"A country."

"Shall we ever go there to hunt?"

"Shall we ever go the other side of the sunrise to hunt? France is the
other side of the sunrise. Talk to the squaws."

Though rebuked, I determined to do it if any information could be got
out of them. The desire to know things was consuming. I had the belated
feeling of one who waked to consciousness late in life and found the
world had run away from him. The camp seemed strange, as if I had been
gone many years, but every object was so wonderfully distinct.

My mother Marianne fed me, and when I lay down dizzy in the bunk,
covered me. The family must have thought it was natural sleep. But it
was a fainting collapse, which took me more than once afterwards as
suddenly as a blow on the head, when my faculties were most needed.
Whether this was caused by the plunge upon the rock or the dim life from
which I had emerged, I do not know. One moment I saw the children, and
mothers from the neighboring lodges, more interested than my own
mother: our smoky rafters, and the fire pit in the center of unfloored
ground: my clothes hanging over the bunk, and even a dog with his nose
in the kettle. And then, as