It struck me very forcibly, after a little while, that this “boy without a name” was a most puzzling individual to go in search of.  The usual interrogatory question of “What’s your name?” would not be of the least use to find such a personage, and to ask a man if he had no name, as a preliminary question, might be to insult him.  I therefore fell back upon Pinguish, but could obtain no intelligence of him whatever.  Pinguish had apparently never been heard of.  It then occurred to me that the boy without the name might perhaps be a remarkable character in the neighbourhood, owing to his peculiar exception from the lot of humanity; but no such negative person had ever been known, and I was constrained to believe that Pinguish and his mysterious partner had fallen victims to the small-pox or had no existence; for at Saddle Lake the small-pox had worked its direst fury, it was still raging in two little huts close to the track, and when we halted for dinner near the south end of the lake the first man who approached was marked and seared by the disease.  It was fated that this day we were to be honoured by peculiar company at our dinner.  In addition to the small-pox man, there came an ill-looking fellow of the name of Fayel, who at once proceeded to make himself at his ease beside us.  This individual bore a deeper brand than that of small-pox upon him, inasmuch as a couple of years before he had foully murdered a comrade in one of the passes of the Rocky Mountains when returning from British Columbia.  But this was not the only intelligence as to my companions that I was destined to receive upon my arrival on the following day at Victoria.

“You have got Louis Battenotte, with you, I see,” said the Hudson Bay officer in charge.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Did he tell you any thing about the small-pox?”

“Oh yes; a great deal; he often spoke about it.”

“Did he say he had had it himself?”

“No.”

“Well, he had,” continued ny host, “only a month ago, and the coat and trousers that he now wears were the same articles of clothing in which he lay all the time he had it,” was the pleasant reply.

After this little revelation concerning Battenotte and his habiliments, I must admit that I was not quite as ready to look with pleasure upon his performance of the duties of cook, chambermaid, and general valet as I had been in the earlier stage of our acquaintance; but a little reflection made the hole thing right again, convincing one of the fact that travelling, like misery, “makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows,” and that luck has more to do with our lives than we are wont to admit.  After leaving Saddle Lake we entered a very rich and beautiful country, completely clear of snow and covered deep in grass and vetches.  We travelled hard, and reached at nightfall a thick wood of pines and spruce-trees, in which we made a cosy camp.  I had brought with me a bottle of old brandy from Red River in case of