ntics. Ah! the wholesome restraint of discipline is but
little known among this self-abandoned people. In a country of birches,
a rod is never seen, and it ought not to appear a marvel in my eyes,
that the choicest blessings of Providence are wasted in such cries as
these."

David closed his ears against the juvenile pack, whose yell just then
rang shrilly through the forest; and Duncan, suffering his lip to curl,
as in mockery of his own superstition, said firmly:

"We will proceed."

Without removing the safeguards form his ears, the master of song
complied, and together they pursued their way toward what David was
sometimes wont to call the "tents of the Philistines."

CHAPTER 23

"But though the beast of game
The privilege of chase may claim;
Though space and law the stag we lend
Ere hound we slip, or bow we bend;
Whoever recked, where, how, or when
The prowling fox was trapped or slain?"
--Lady of the Lake.

It is unusual to find an encampment of the natives, like those of the
more instructed whites, guarded by the presence of armed men. Well
informed of the approach of every danger, while it is yet at a distance,
the Indian generally rests secure under his knowledge of the signs of
the forest, and the long and difficult paths that separate him from
those he has most reason to dread. But the enemy who, by any lucky
concurrence of accidents, has found means to elude the vigilance of the
scouts, will seldom meet with sentinels nearer home to sound the alarm.
In addition to this general usage, the tribes friendly to the French
knew too well the weight of the blow that had just been struck, to
apprehend any immediate danger from the hostile nations that were
tributary to the crown of Britain.

When Duncan and David, therefore, found themselves in the center of the
children, who played the antics already mentioned, it was without the
least previous intimation of their approach. But so soon as they were
observed the whole of the juvenile pack raised, by common consent, a
shrill and warning whoop; and then sank, as it were, by magic, from
before the sight of their visitors. The naked, tawny bodies of the
crouching urchins blended so nicely at that hour, with the withered
herbage, that at first it seemed as if the earth had, in truth,
swallowed up their forms; though when surprise permitted Duncan to bend
his look more curiously about the spot, he found it everywhere met