"Is the medicine out?" drily demanded Ishmael: "it must be a rare dose
that gives a heavy feel to the tongue of old Eester!"

"Friend," continued the Doctor, waving his hand for the angry wife to
maintain the peace, "that it cannot perform all that is said of it, the
very charge of good Mrs. Bush is a sufficient proof. But to speak of the
absent Asa. There is doubt as to his fate, and there is a proposition
to solve it. Now, in the natural sciences truth is always a desideratum;
and I confess it would seem to be equally so in the present case of
domestic uncertainty, which may be called a vacuum where according to
the laws of physic, there should exist some pretty palpable proofs of
materiality."

"Don't mind him, don't mind him," cried Esther, observing that the rest
of his auditors listened with an attention which might proceed, equally,
from acquiescence in his proposal or ignorance of its meaning. "There is
a drug in every word he utters."

"Dr. Battius wishes to say," Ellen modestly interposed, "that as some
of us think Asa is in danger, and some think otherwise, the whole family
might pass an hour or two in looking for him."

"Does he?" interrupted the woman; "then Dr. Battius has more sense in
him than I believed! She is right, Ishmael; and what she says, shall be
done. I will shoulder a rifle myself; and woe betide the red-skin that
crosses my path! I have pulled a trigger before to-day; ay, and heard an
Indian yell, too, to my sorrow."

The spirit of Esther diffused itself, like the stimulus which attends
a war-cry, among her sons. They arose in a body, and declared their
determination to second so bold a resolution. Ishmael prudently yielded
to an impulse he could not resist, and in a few minutes the woman
appeared, shouldering her arms, prepared to lead forth, in person, such
of her descendants as chose to follow.

"Let them stay with the children that please," she said, "and them
follow me, who ar' not chicken-hearted!"

"Abiram, it will not do to leave the huts without some guard," Ishmael
whispered, glancing his eye upward.

The man whom he addressed started, and betrayed extraordinary eagerness
in his reply.

"I will tarry and watch the camp."

A dozen voices were instantly raised in objections to this proposal.
He was wanted to point out the places where the hostile tracks had been
seen, and his termagant sister openly scouted at the idea, as unworthy
of his manhood. The reluctant Abiram was