over the camp, "d' ye get me here to take advantage o' me, and no pay me
my honest airnins?"

"What the devil to do with this fellow, short, of giving him a drubbing, I
do not know," said Picton. "Here, you, give us change for a sovereign, or
take yourself off and wait at the hotel till we get back again."

"I canna change a sovereign, I tell ye"----

"Then be off with you, and wait."

"Wad ye send me away without my honest airnins?" he uttered, with a whine
like the bleat of a bagpipe.

Picton drew a little closer to Malcolm, with one fist carefully doubled up
and put in ambush behind his back. But the boy interposed--"Perhaps the
Micmac chief could change the sovereign."

"Oh! ay," quoth Malcolm, who had given an uneasy look at Picton as he
stepped towards him; "Oh! ay; I'se tak ye tull 'im;" and without further
ado he stepped off briskly towards the centre of the camp, and we followed
in his wake. When our file-leader reached the wigwam of the chief, he
went down on hands and knees, lifted up a little curtain or blanket in
front of the low door of the tent, crawled in head first, and we followed
close upon his heels.

As soon as the eye became accustomed to the dim and uncertain light of the
interior, we began to examine the curious and simple architecture of this
human bee-hive. A circle of poles, say about ten feet in diameter at the
base, and tied together to an apex at the top, covered with the thin bark
of the birch-tree, except a space above to let out the smoke, was all the
protection these people had against the elements in summer or winter. The
floor, of course, was the primitive soil of Cape Breton; in the centre of
the tent a few sticks were smouldering away over a little pile of ashes:
the thin smoke lifted itself up in folds of blue vapor until it stole
forth into the evening air from the opening in the roof. Through this
aperture the light--the only light of the tent--fell down upon the group
below: the old chief with his great silver cross, and medal, and
snow-white hair; the young and beautiful squaw with her pappoose at the
breast, like a Madonna by Murillo; Malcolm's battered tarpaulin and
Guernsey shirt; and the two unpicturesque objects of the party--Picton and
myself. Around the central fire a broad, green border of fragrant hemlock
twigs, extending to the skirts of the tent, was raised a few inches from
the ground. Upon this couch we sat, and opened our business with the aged
sagamore.