But we should be doing injustice to le Bourdon, were we in any manner to confound him with the “dickering” race.  He was a bee-hunter quite as much through love of the wilderness and love of adventure, as through love of gain.  Profitable he had certainly found the employment, or he probably would not have pursued it; but there was many a man who—­nay, most men, even in his own humble class in life-would have deemed his liberal earnings too hardly obtained, when gained at the expense of all intercourse with their own kind.  But Buzzing Ben loved the solitude of his situation, its hazards, its quietude, relieved by passing moments of high excitement; and, most of all, the self-reliance that was indispensable equally to his success and his happiness.  Woman, as yet, had never exercised her witchery over him, and every day was his passion for dwelling alone, and for enjoying the strange, but certainly most alluring, pleasures of the woods, increasing and gaining strength in his bosom.  It was seldom, now, that he held intercourse even with the Indian tribes that dwelt near his occasional places of hunting; and frequently had he shifted his ground in order to avoid collision, however friendly, with whites who, like himself, were pushing their humble fortunes along the shores of those inland seas, which, as yet, were rarely indeed whitened by a sail.  In this respect, Boden and Waring were the very antipodes of each other; Gershom being an inveterate gossip, in despite of his attachment to a vagrant and border life.

The duties of hospitality are rarely forgotten among border men.  The inhabitant of a town may lose his natural disposition to receive all who offer at his board, under the pressure of society; but it is only in most extraordinary exceptions that the frontier man is ever known to be inhospitable.  He has little to offer, but that little is seldom withheld, either through prudence or niggardliness.  Under this feeling—­we might call it habit also—­le Bourdon now set himself at work to place on the table such food as he had at command and ready cooked.  The meal which he soon pressed his guests to share with him was composed of a good piece of cold boiled pork, which Ben had luckily cooked the day previously, some bear’s meat roasted, a fragment of venison steak, both lean and cold, and the remains of a duck that had been shot the day before, in the Kalamazoo, with bread, salt, and, what was somewhat unusual in the wilderness, two or three onions, raw.  The last dish was highly relished by Gershom, and was slightly honored by Ben; but the Indians passed it over with cold indifference.  The dessert consisted of bread and honey, which were liberally partaken of by all at table.

Little was said by either host or guests, until the supper was finished, when the whole party left the chiente, to enjoy their pipes in the cool evening air, beneath the oaks of the grove in which the dwelling stood.  Their conversation began to let the parties know something of each other’s movements and characters.