"We will have a clearing and a nice field of corn next year, if we live," replied Hector; "that corn that we found in the canoe will be a treasure."
"Yes; and the corn-cob you got on Bare Hill," said Catharine. "How lucky we have been! We shall be so happy when we see our little field of corn flourishing round the shanty! It was a good thing, Hec, that you went to the Indian camp that day, though both Louis and I were very miserable while you were absent; but, you see, God must have directed you, that the life of this poor girl might be saved, to be a comfort to us. Everything has prospered well with us since she came to us. Perhaps it is because we try to make a Christian of her, and so God blesses all our endeavours."
"We are told," said Hector, "that there is joy with the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth: doubtless, it is a joyful thing when the heathen, that knew not the name of God, are taught to glorify his holy name."
Indiana, while exploring, had captured a porcupine. She declared that she should have plenty of quills for edging baskets and moccasins; besides, she said, the meat was white and good to eat. Hector looked with a suspicious eye upon the little animal, doubting the propriety of eating its flesh, though he had learned to eat musk-rats, and consider them good meat, baked in Louis's Indian oven, or roasted on a forked stick before the fire. The Indian porcupine is a small animal, not a very great deal larger than the common British hedgehog; the quills, however, are longer and stronger, and varied with alternate clouded marks of pure white and dark brownish-gray; they are minutely barbed, so that if one enters the flesh it is with difficulty extracted, but will work through of itself in an opposite direction, and can then be easily pulled out. Dogs and cattle often suffer great inconvenience from getting their muzzles filled with the quills of the porcupine, the former when worrying the poor little animal, and the latter by accidentally meeting a dead one among the herbage; great inflammation will sometimes attend the extraction. Indians often lose valuable hounds from this cause. Besides porcupines, Indiana told her companions, there were some fine butter-nut trees (Juglans cinerea) on the island, and they could collect a bagful of nuts in a very short time. This was good news, for the butter-nut is sweet and pleasant, almost equal to the walnut, of which it is a species.
The day was passed pleasantly enough in collecting nuts and grapes; but as this island did not afford any good cleared spot for passing the night, and moreover, was tenanted by black snakes, several of which made their appearance among the stones near the edge of the water, they agreed by common counsel to go to Long Island, where Indiana said there was an old log-house, the walls of which were still standing, and where there was dry moss in plenty which would make them a comfortable bed for the night. This old log-house, she said, had been built, she had heard the Indians say, by a French Canadian trapper, who used to visit the lake some years ago. He was on friendly terms with the chiefs, who allowed him many privileges, and he bought their furs, and took them down the lake, through the river Trent, to some station-house on the great lake. They found they should have time enough to land and deposit their nuts and grapes and paddle to Long Island before sunset. Upon the western part of this fine island they had several times landed and passed some hours, exploring its shores; but Indiana told them that to reach the old log-house they must enter the low swampy bay to the east, at an opening which she called Indian Cove. To do this required some skill in the management of the canoe, which was rather overloaded for so light a vessel, and the trees grew so close and thick that they had some difficulty in pushing their way through them without injuring its frail sides. These trees or bushes were chiefly black alder (Alnus incuna), high-bush cranberries (Viburnum opulus), dogwood, willows, as they proceeded further, there was ground of a more solid nature, with cedar, poplar, swamp oak, and soft maple, silver birch, and wild cherries. Long strings of silver-gray tree-moss hung dangling over their heads, the bark and roots of the birch and cedars were covered with a luxuriant growth of green moss, but there was a dampness and closeness in this place that made it far from wholesome. The little band of voyagers were not sorry when the water became too shallow to admit of the canoe making its way through the swampy channel, and they landed on the bank of a small circular pond, as round as a ring, and nearly surrounded by tall trees hoary with moss and lichens; large water-lilies floated on the surface of this miniature lake; the brilliant red berries of the high-bush cranberry and the purple clusters of grapes festooned the trees. "A famous breeding-place this must be for ducks," observed Louis.
"And for flowers," said Catharine, "and for grapes and cranberries. There is always some beauty or some usefulness to be found, however lonely the spot."
"A fine place for musk-rats, and minks, and fishes," said Hector, looking round. "The old trapper knew what he was about when he made his lodge near this pond. And there, sure enough, is the log-hut, and not so bad a one either;" and scrambling up the bank he entered the deserted little tenement, well pleased to find it in tolerable repair. There were the ashes on the stone hearth, just as it had been left years back by the old trapper; some rough-hewn shelves, a rude bedstead of cedar poles still occupied a corner of the little dwelling; heaps of old dry moss and grass lay upon the ground; and the little squaw pointed with one of her silent laughs to a collection of broken egg-shells, where some wild-duck had sat and hatched her downy brood among the soft materials which she had found and appropriated to her own purpose. The only things pertaining to the former possessor of the log-hut were an old, rusty, battered tin pannikin, now, alas! unfit for holding water; a bit of a broken earthen whisky jar; a rusty nail, which Louis pocketed, or rather pouched—for he had substituted a fine pouch of deer-skin for his worn-out pocket; and a fishing-line of good stout cord, which was wound on a splinter of red cedar, and carefully stuck between one of the rafters and the roof of the shanty. A rusty but efficient hook was attached to the line, and Louis, who was the finder, was quite overjoyed at his good fortune in making so valuable an addition to his fishing tackle. Hector got only an odd worn-out moccasin, which he threw into the little pond in disdain: while Catharine declared she would keep the old tin pot as a relic, and carefully deposited it in the canoe.
As they made their way into the interior of the island, they found that there were a great many fine sugar maples, which had been tapped by some one—as the boys thought, by the old trapper, but Indiana, on examining the incisions in the trees, and the remnants of birch-bark vessels that lay moldering on the earth below them, declared them to have been the work of her own people, and long and sadly did the young girl look upon these simple memorials of a race of whom she was the last living remnant. The young girl stood there in melancholy mood, a solitary, isolated being, with no kindred tie upon the earth to make life dear to her; a stranger in the land of her fathers, associating with those whose ways were not her ways, nor their thoughts her thoughts, whose language was scarcely known to her, whose God was not the god of her fathers. Yet the dark eyes of the Indian girl were not dimmed with tears as she thought of these things, she had learned of her people to suffer and be still.
Silent and patient she stood, with her melancholy gaze bent on the earth, when she felt the gentle hand of Catharine laid upon her arm, and then kindly and lovingly passed round her neck, as she whispered,—
"Indiana, I will be to you as a sister, and will love you and cherish you, because you are an orphan girl and alone in the world; but God loves you, and will make you happy. He is a Father to the fatherless, and the Friend of the destitute and them that have no helper."