achechana in
the suddenness of her surprise, but the emotion was instantly suppressed
in that subdued demeanour which should characterise a matron of her
tribe. Instead of returning the stolen glance of his youthful and
secretly rejoicing wife, Mahtoree moved to the couch, occupied by his
prisoners, and placed himself in the haughty, upright attitude of an
Indian chief, before their eyes. The old man had glided past him, and
already taken a position suited to the office he had been commanded to
fill.

Surprise kept the females silent and nearly breathless. Though
accustomed to the sight of savage warriors, in the horrid panoply of
their terrible profession, there was something so startling in the
entrance, and so audacious in the inexplicable look of their conqueror,
that the eyes of both sunk to the earth, under a feeling of terror and
embarrassment. Then Inez recovered herself, and addressing the trapper,
she demanded, with the dignity of an offended gentlewoman, though with
her accustomed grace, to what circumstance they owed this extraordinary
and unexpected visit. The old man hesitated; but clearing his throat,
like one who was about to make an effort to which he was little used, he
ventured on the following reply--

"Lady," he said, "a savage is a savage, and you are not to look for the
uses and formalities of the settlements on a bleak and windy prairie.
As these Indians would say, fashions and courtesies are things so light,
that they would blow away. As for myself, though a man of the forest, I
have seen the ways of the great, in my time, and I am not to learn that
they differ from the ways of the lowly. I was long a serving-man in my
youth, not one of your beck-and-nod runners about a household, but a man
that went through the servitude of the forest with his officer, and well
do I know in what manner to approach the wife of a captain. Now, had I
the ordering of this visit, I would first have hemmed aloud at the door,
in order that you might hear that strangers were coming, and then I--"

"The manner is indifferent," interrupted Inez, too anxious to await the
prolix explanations of the old man; "why is the visit made?"

"Therein shall the savage speak for himself. The daughters of the
Pale-faces wish to know why the Great Teton has come into his lodge?"

Mahtoree regarded his interrogator with a surprise, which showed how
extraordinary he deemed the question. Then placing himself in a posture
of condescen