"I do not think he looks like an Indian; but let us watch. What is he doing?"
"Fishing. See now, he has just caught a fine bass—another—he has great luck—now he is pushing the canoe ashore."
"That man does not move like an Indian—hark! he is whistling. I ought to know that tune. It sounds like the old chanson my father used to sing;" and Louis, raising his voice, began to sing the words of an old French Canadian song, which we will give in the English, as we heard it sung by an old lumberer,—
"Down by those banks where the pleasant waters flow,
Through the wild woods we'll wander, and we'll chase the buffalo.
And we'll chase the buffalo."
"Hush, Louis! you will bring the man over to us," said Hector.
"The very thing I am trying to do, mon ami. This is our country, and that may be his; but we are lords here, and two to one, so I think he will not be likely to treat us ill. I am a man now, and so are you, and he is but one; so he must mind how he affronts us," replied Louis, laughing.
"Hark, if he is not singing now! ay, and the very chorus of the old song"—and Louis raised his voice to its highest pitch as he repeated,—
"'Through the wild woods we'll wander,
And we'll chase the buffalo
—And we'll chase the buffalo.'
"What a pity I have forgotten the rest of that dear old song. I used to listen with open ears to it when I was a boy. I never thought to hear it again, and to hear it here of all places in the world!"
"Come, let us go on with our work," said Hector, with something like impatience in his voice, and the strokes of his axe fell once more in regular succession on the log; but Louis's eye was still on the mysterious fisher, whom he could discern lounging on the grass and smoking his pipe. "I do not think he sees or hears us," said Louis to himself, "but I think I'll manage to bring him over soon;" and he set himself busily to work to scrape up the loose chips and shavings, and soon began to strike fire with his knife and flint.