at his hand as he
walked beside her, but he petulantly pulled away.

"I mean _in my mind_, Odalie,--I hear it now _in my mind_. And all of a
sudden it came to me that it was that stump up on the slope that was
gobbling so cheerful, and gobbling me along into gunshot.[1] And just
then I was in rifle range, and I fired at the same minute that the stump
fired, or the turkey, whichever you choose to call him--What is the
reason, Sandy, that Injuns are so apt to load with too little powder?"
he broke off, speaking to his brother. "The turkey shot straight--his
ball dropped spent just at my feet."

"_Quelle barbarie!_" exclaimed Mrs. MacLeod, catching his hand
again--this time to give it a little squeeze--impressed with the
imminence of the boy's danger and their loss.

But Hamish was quite as independent of caresses and approval as of
rebuke, and he carelessly twisted his hand away from his sister-in-law
as he cocked his head to one side to hear the more experienced hunter's
reply.

"Because their powder is so precious, and scant, and hard to come by,
they economize it," said Alexander MacLeod, as he trudged along behind
the packhorses, guarding the rear of his little party with his rifle on
his shoulder.

"The turkey would better have economized his meat this time," said the
boy, swinging round his belt to lift the lid of his powder-horn and peep
gloatingly in at the reinforced stores. "He was economical with his
powder, but extravagant with his life; for that turkey will gobble no
more."

He gobbled a brisk and agitated imitation of the cry of the fowl, and
then broke off to exclaim, "_Quelle barbarie!_--eh, Odalie?"

He looked at his sister-in-law with a roguish eye, as he travestied the
tone and manner of her favorite ejaculation, which he was wont to call
the "family oath." For indeed they had all come to make use of the
phrase, in their varying accent, to express their disaffection with the
ordering of events, or the conduct of one another, or the provoking
mischance of inanimate objects,--as the gun's hanging fire, or the
reluctance of a spark to kindle from flint to make their camp-fire, or
the overturning of a pot of buffalo soup, or bear stew, when the
famished fugitives were ready to partake in reality of the feast which
their olfactory nerves and eyes had already begun. Even the little girl
would exclaim, "_Quelle barbarie!_" when thorns caught her skirts and
held her prisoner as she had skipped along so