a fire, in order to keep the mosquitos at a distance, selecting a spot to kindle it, behind a swell on the land, that concealed the light from all on the other shore.  In the morning, it would be necessary to extinguish that fire, lest its smoke should betray their position.  It was while these things were in progress, and after le Bourdon had himself procured the fuel necessary to feed pretty Margery’s fire, that he questioned the Chippewa touching his captivity.

“Yes, tell all ’bout him,” answered the Indian, as soon as interrogated—­“no good to hide trail from friend.  ’Member when say good-by up in openin’ to Bourdon?”

“Certainly—­I remember the very instant when you left me.  The Pottawattamie went on one path, and you went on another.  I was glad of that, as you seemed to think he was not your friend.”

“Yes; good not to travel on same path as inimy, ’cause he quarrel sometime,” coolly returned the Indian.  “Dis time, path come together, somehow; and Pottawattamie lose he scalp.”

“I am aware of all that, Pigeonswing, and wish it had not been so.  I found the body of Elksfoot sitting up against a tree soon after you left me, and knew by whose hands he had fallen.”

“Didn’t find scalp, eh?”

“No, the scalp had been taken; though I accounted that but for little, since the man’s life was gone.  There is little gained by carrying on war in this manner, making the woods, and the openings, and the prairies, alike unsafe.  You see, to what distress this family is reduced by your Injin manner of making war.”

“How you make him, den—­want, to hear.  Go kiss, and give venison to inimy, or go get his scalp, eh?  Which bess fashion to make him afeard, and own you master?”

“All that may be done without killing single travellers, or murdering women and children.  The peace will be made none the sooner between England and America, because you have got the scalp of Elksfoot.”

“No haben’t got him any longer; wish had—­Pottawattamie take him away, and say he bury him.  Well, let him hide him in a hole deep as white man’s well, can’t hide Pigeonswing honor dere, too.  Dat is safe as notch cut on stick can make him!”

This notch on a stick was the Indian mode of gazetting a warrior; and a certain number of these notches was pretty certain to procure for him a sort of savage brevet, which answered his purpose quite as well as the modern mode of brevetting at Washington answers our purpose.  Neither brings any pay, we believe, nor any command, except in such cases as rarely occur, and then only to the advantage of government.  There are varieties in honor, as in any other human interest:  so are there many moral degrees in warfare.  Thus, the very individual who admires the occupation of Algiers, or that of Tahiti, or the attack on Canton, together with the long train of Indian events which have dyed the peninsulas of the East in the blood of their people, sees an alarming enormity in the knocking