ostility on the part
of their hosts. Hard-Heart beckoned for Middleton and Paul to follow,
leading the way towards the cluster of forms, that occupied the centre
of the circle. Here the visiters found a solution of all the movements,
which had given them so much reason for apprehension.

The trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made, with studied
care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first
glance of the eye told his former friends, that the old man was at
length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was
glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features
were a little more sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there,
all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have
ceased. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive
disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the physical powers.
Life, it is true, still lingered in his system; but it was as if at
times entirely ready to depart, and then it would appear to re-animate
the sinking form, reluctant to give up the possession of a tenement,
that had never been corrupted by vice, or undermined by disease. It
would have been no violent fancy to have imagined, that the spirit
fluttered about the placid lips of the old woodsman, reluctant to depart
from a shell, that had so long given it an honest and an honourable
shelter.

His body was placed so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full
upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long, thin, locks of
grey fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. His rifle lay upon his
knee, and the other accoutrements of the chase were placed at his side,
within reach of his hand. Between his feet lay the figure of a hound,
with its head crouching to the earth as if it slumbered; and so
perfectly easy and natural was its position, that a second glance was
necessary to tell Middleton, he saw only the skin of Hector, stuffed
by Indian tenderness and ingenuity in a manner to represent the living
animal. His own dog was playing at a distance, with the child of
Tachechana and Mahtoree. The mother herself stood at hand, holding in
her arms a second offspring, that might boast of a parentage no less
honourable, than that which belonged to the son of Hard-Heart. Le
Balafre was seated nigh the dying trapper, with every mark about his
person, that the hour of his own departure was not far distant. The rest
of those im