the buzzing of the little cedar box. Not infrequently, he was out
in the evening, and the human partner was left alone. It chanced, quite
fortunately, that the bear was absent on the night that the red folk
rudely invaded the lonely hut.

The calmness of the strange being had stayed their hands. They had never
before seen a man of other race than their own!

"Is this Chanotedah? Is he man, or beast?" the warriors asked one
another.

"Ho, wake up, koda!" exclaimed Anookasan. "Maybe he is of the porcupine
tribe, ashamed to look at us!"

At this moment they spied the haunch of venison which swung from a
cross-stick over a fine bed of coals, in front of the rude mud chimney.

"Ho, koda has something to eat! Sit down, sit down!" they shouted to one
another.

Now Antoine opened his eyes for the first time upon his unlooked-for
guests. They were a haggard and hungry-looking set. Anookasan extended
his hand, and Antoine gave it a hearty shake. He set his fiddle against
the wall and began to cut up the smoking venison into generous pieces
and place it before them. All ate like famished men, while the firelight
intensified the red paint upon their wild and warlike faces.

When he had satisfied his first hunger, Anookasan spoke in signs.
"Friend, we have never before heard a song like that of your little
cedar box! We had supposed it to be a spirit, or some harmful thing,
hence our attack upon it. We never saw any people of your sort. What is
your tribe?"

Antoine explained his plight in the same manner, and the two soon came
to an understanding. The Canadian told the starving hunters of a buffalo
herd a little way to the north, and one of their number was dispatched
homeward with the news. In two days the entire band reached Antoine's
place. The Bois Brule was treated with kindness and honor, and the tribe
gave him a wife. Suffice it to say that Antoine lived and died among the
Yanktons at a good old age; but Ami could not brook the invasion upon
their hermit life. He was never seen after that first evening.

IV. THE FAMINE

On the Assiniboine River in western Manitoba there stands an old,
historic trading-post, whose crumbling walls crown a high promontory in
the angle formed by its junction with a tributary stream. This is Fort
Ellis, a mistress of the wilderness and lodestone of savage tribes
between the years 1830 and 1870.

Hither at that early day the Indians brought their buffalo robes and
beaver skins