“Well, that’s reasonable, I allow,” said Cap, who was no devotee of learning:  “he means that as a hit at your reading, Magnet; for the chief has sensible notions of things in his own way.  How far, now, Arrowhead, do you make us, by your calculation, from the bit of a pond that you call the Great Lake, and towards which we have been so many days shaping our course?”

The Tuscarora looked at the seaman with quiet superiority as he answered, “Ontario, like heaven; one sun, and the great traveller will know it.”

“Well, I have been a great traveller, I cannot deny; but of all my v’y’ges this has been the longest, the least profitable, and the farthest inland.  If this body of fresh water is so nigh, Arrowhead, and so large, one might think a pair of good eyes would find it out; for apparently everything within thirty miles is to be seen from this lookout.”

“Look,” said Arrowhead, stretching an arm before him with quiet grace; “Ontario!”

“Uncle, you are accustomed to cry ‘Land ho!’ but not ‘Water ho!’ and you do not see it,” cried the niece, laughing, as girls will laugh at their own idle conceits.

“How now, Magnet! dost suppose that I shouldn’t know my native element if it were in sight?”

“But Ontario is not your native element, dear uncle; for you come from the salt water, while this is fresh.”

“That might make some difference to your young mariner, but none to the old one.  I should know water, child, were I to see it in China.”

“Ontario,” repeated Arrowhead, with emphasis, again stretching his hand towards the north-west.

Cap looked at the Tuscarora, for the first time since their acquaintance, with something like an air of contempt, though he did not fail to follow the direction of the chief’s eye and arm, both of which were directed towards a vacant point in the heavens, a short distance above the plain of leaves.

“Ay, ay; this is much as I expected, when I left the coast in search of a fresh-water pond,” resumed Cap, shrugging his shoulders like one whose mind was made up, and who thought no more need be said.  “Ontario may be there, or, for that matter, it may be in my pocket.  Well, I suppose there will be room enough, when we reach it, to work our canoe.  But Arrowhead, if there be pale-faces in our neighborhood, I confess I should like to get within hail of them.”

The Tuscarora now gave a quiet inclination of his head, and the whole party descended from the roots of the up-torn tree in silence.  When they reached the ground, Arrowhead intimated his intention to go towards the fire, and ascertain who had lighted it; while he advised his wife and the two others to return to a canoe, which they had left in the adjacent stream, and await his return.

“Why, chief, this might do on soundings, and in an offing where one knew the channel,” returned old Cap; “but in an unknown region like this I think it unsafe to trust the pilot alone too far from the ship:  so, with your leave, we will not part company.”