s.

Thick snowy weather and a head wind prevented us from starting the
following day, but on the morning of the 23d we set out, carrying with
us the remainder of the singed robe. Hepburn and Michel had each a gun,
and I carried a small pistol which Hepburn had loaded for me. In the
course of the march Michel alarmed us much by his gestures and conduct,
was constantly muttering to himself, expressed an unwillingness to go
the Fort, and tried to persuade me to go to the southward to the woods,
where he said he could maintain himself all the winter by killing deer.
In consequence of this behaviour, and the expression of his countenance,
I requested him to leave us, and to go to the southward by himself. This
proposal increased his ill-nature, he threw out some obscure hints of
freeing himself from all restraint on the morrow{47}; and I overheard
him muttering threats against Hepburn, whom he openly accused of having
told stories against him. He also, for the first time, assumed such a
tone of superiority in addressing me, as evinced that he considered us
to be completely in his power, and he gave vent to several expressions
of hatred towards the white people, or as he termed us in the idiom of
the voyagers, the French, some of whom, he said, had killed and eaten
his uncle and two of his relations. In short, taking every circumstance
of his conduct into consideration, I came to the conclusion that he
would attempt to destroy us on the first opportunity that offered, and
that he had hitherto abstained from doing so from his ignorance of his
way to the Fort, but that he would never suffer us to go thither in
company with him. In the course of the day he had several times remarked
that we were pursuing the same course that Mr. Franklin was doing when
he left him, and that by keeping towards the setting sun he could find
his way himself. Hepburn and I were not in a condition to resist even an
open attack, nor could we by any device escape from him. Our united
strength was far inferior to his, and, beside his gun, he was armed with
two pistols, an Indian bayonet and a knife. In the afternoon, coming to
a rock on which there was some _tripe de roche_, he halted, and said he
would gather it whilst we went on, and that he would soon overtake us.
Hepburn and I were now left together for the first time since Mr. Hood's
death, and he acquainted me with several material circumstances which he
had observed of Michel's behaviour, and whic