that. Peterkin hadn't courage to arrest his
hand, and when the deed was done he looked timidly round to see if the
action had been observed. Nearly half the table had seen it, but they
pretended ignorance of the thing so well that he thought no one had
observed, and so went quietly on with his breakfast, and drank the tea!
But I am wandering from my story. Well, about this time there was a
young Indian who shot himself accidentally in the woods, and was brought
to the fort to see if anything could be done for him. The doctor
examined his wound, and found that the ball had passed through the upper
part of his right arm and the middle of his right thigh, breaking the
bone of the latter in its passage. It was an extraordinary shot for a
man to put into himself, for it would have been next to impossible even
for _another_ man to have done it, unless the Indian had been creeping
on all fours. When he was able to speak, however, he explained the
mystery. While running through a rough part of the wood after a wounded
bird, he stumbled and fell on all fours. The gun, which he was carrying
over his shoulder, holding it, as the Indians usually do, by the muzzle,
flew forward, and turned right round as he fell, so that the mouth of it
was presented towards him. Striking against the stem of a tree, it
exploded, and shot him through the arm and leg as described ere he had
time to rise. A comrade carried him to his lodge, and his wife brought
him in a canoe to the fort. For three or four days the doctor had hopes
of him, but at last he began to sink, and died on the sixth day after
his arrival. His wife and one or two friends buried him in our
graveyard, which lies, as you know, on that lonely-looking point just
below the powder-magazine. For several months previous to this our
worthy doctor had been making strenuous efforts to get an Indian skull
to send home to one of his medical friends, but without success. The
Indians could not be prevailed upon to cut off the head of one of their
dead countrymen for love or money, and the doctor had a dislike to the
idea, I suppose, of killing one for himself; but now here was a golden
opportunity. The Indian was buried near to the fort, and his relatives
had gone away to their tents again. What was to prevent his being dug
up? The doctor brooded over the thing for one hour and a half (being
exactly the length of time required to smoke out his large Turkey pipe),
and then saunte