'What an erect fellow he is, and as taciturn as a mole!' quoth the lively Argent. 'I hope we shall meet with some of his step-relations, the Indians; I've quite a passion for savage life, that is, to look at. Last winter's leave I made some excursions on Lake Simcoe; the islands there are all savage territory, belonging to the Ojibbeways. Poor fellows, they're dying out—every year becoming fewer; yet one can discern the relics of a magnificent race. Red cunning has been no match for white wisdom, that's certain.'

Arthur was a willing listener to many stories about his friend's excursions; and so the time was wiled away as they drove deeper into the recesses of the forest, even to the extreme end of all concession lines.

Here was Ina's wigwam, on the edge of a small pond, which was closely hedged in with pines. Wasting no words, he merely stepped back to unbuckle the shaggy pony, and at the ensuing noonday meal Arthur for the first time tasted the wilderness preserve called 'pemmican.' It was not unlike what housewives at home denominate 'collar,' he thought, cutting in compact slices of interwoven fat and lean.

'How is it made, Argent?'

'I believe the dried venison is pounded between stones till the fibres separate, and in that powdery state is mixed with hot melted buffalo's fat, and sewed up in bags of skin. They say it is most nutritive—a pound equal to four pounds of ordinary meat. A sort of concentrated nourishment, you see.'

'What are those blackish things hanging up in the smoke, I wonder?'

'Beavers' tails, captured in the creeks off the lake, I suppose; capital food, tasting like bacon, but a little gristly.'

'And does the fellow live here, all alone?' A quick and perhaps unfriendly glance of Ina's black eyes proved that he was not deaf, though by choice dumb.

'Well, I suppose so, this year; but he's a great rover. Was with me on the Simcoe last year. I never met such a lover of the chase for its own sake. His forefathers' instincts are rampant in him. Ina, have we any chance of a moose?'

The trapper shook his grisly head. 'Only on the hard wood ridges all winter,' he answered; 'they "yard" whar maples grows, for they live on the tops and bark. Bariboos come down here, mostly.'