grave tone,--"I
have the wife and child of my bourgeois under my care."

"True, true, Massan," said Stanley, lying back on his couch and
conversing with his wife in an undertone.

"'Tis curious," said he, "to observe the confidence that Massan has in
Prince; and yet it would be difficult to say wherein consists the
superiority of the one over the other."

"Perhaps it is the influence of a strong mind over a weaker," suggested
his wife.

"It may be so. Yet Prince is an utterly uneducated man. True, he
shoots a hair's-breadth better than Massan; but he is not a better
canoe-man, neither is he more courageous, and he is certainly less
powerful: nevertheless Massan looks up to him and speaks of him as if he
were greatly his superior. The secret of his power must lie in that
steady, never-wavering inflexibility of purpose, that characterises our
good bowman in everything he does."

"Papa," said Edith, who had been holding a long conversation with Chimo
on the wonders of the scene around them--if we may call that a
conversation where the one party does all the talking and the other all
the listening--"papa, where shall we all sleep to-night?"

The thought seemed to have struck her for the first time, and she looked
up eagerly for an answer, while Chimo gave a deep sigh of indifference,
and went to sleep, or pretended to do so, where he was.

"In the woods, Eda. How do you think you will like it?"

"Oh, I'm sure I shall like it very much," replied the little one. "I've
often wished to live in the woods altogether like the Indians, and do
nothing but wander about and pull berries."

"Ah, Jessie," said Stanley, "what an idle little baggage your daughter
is! I fear she's a true chip of the old block!"

"Which do you consider the old block," retorted Mrs Stanley--"you or
me?"

"Never mind, wife; we'll leave that an open question.--But tell me, Eda,
don't you think that wandering about and pulling berries would be a very
useless sort of life?"

"No," replied Edith, gravely. "Mamma often tells me that God wants me
to be happy, and I'm quite sure that wandering about all day in the
beautiful woods would make me happy."

"But, my darling," said Stanley, smiling at the simplicity of this
plausible argument in favour of an idle life, "don't you know that we
ought to try to make others happy too, as well as ourselves?"

"Oh yes," replied Eda, with a bright smile, "I know that, papa; and I
would try to make everyb