also found that Big Otter had come in, bringing with him his wife,
and his niece Waboose, with her mother. The health of the latter had
broken down, and Big Otter had brought her to the fort in the hope that
the white chief could do something for her.

"I'll do what I can," said Lumley, on hearing her case stated, "though I
make no pretence to being a medicine-man, but I will do this for you and
her:--I will engage you, if you choose, to help Blondin at his fishery,
and your wife to make moccasins for us. I'll also let you have that
little hut beside our kitchen to live in. You'll find it better and
warmer than a wigwam, and as there are two rooms in it you won't be
overcrowded."

Big Otter was delighted with this arrangement, and I took him away at
once to show him the hut he was to occupy.

As this was the first time I had met with the unknown Englishman's
widow, and the mother of Waboose, it was with no little interest and
curiosity that I regarded her.

She was evidently in very bad health, but I could easily see that when
young she must have been a very handsome woman. Besides being tall and
well-formed, she had a most expressive countenance and a dignified air,
coupled with a look of tender kindness in it, which drew me to her at
once. She seemed in many respects much superior--in manners and
habits--to the other Indian women of the tribe, though still far below
her daughter in that respect, and I could easily perceive that the
latter owed her great superiority and refinement of manner to her
father, though she might well have derived her gentleness from her
mother.

What the illness was that broke that mother down I cannot tell. It
resembled consumption in some respects, though without the cough, but
she improved in health decidedly at first on getting into her new house,
and set to work with zeal to assist in the making of moccasins and other
garments. Of course Waboose helped her; and, very soon after this
arrival, I began to give her lessons in the English language.

Lumley quizzed me a good deal about this at first, but afterwards he
became more serious.

"Now, Max, my boy," he said to me, one evening when we were alone, in
that kindly-serious manner which seemed to come over him whenever he had
occasion to find fault with any one, "it is all very well your giving
lessons in English to that Indian girl, but what I want to know is, what
do you expect to be the upshot of it?"

"Marriage," said