“I had a presentiment,” said he, “when I saw the light of your fire, that I should find friends around it.”
“You are not deceived,” warmly responded Bois-Rose; “you have found friends;—but, pardon me when I ask you, have you no relatives or connections with whom you could find a home?”
For a moment the colour mounted to the cheeks of Tiburcio; but after a slight hesitation, he replied:
“Why should I not be frank with you?—I shall! Know then, brave trappers, that surrounded as I am by enemies who seek my life; disdained by the woman I have loved, and still love—I am alone in the world: I have neither father, nor mother, nor any relative that I know of?”
“Your father and mother—are they dead?” inquired Bois-Rose, with an air of interest.
“I never knew either of them,” answered the young man in a sad voice.
“You have never known them!” cried the Canadian, rising suddenly, and laying hold of a blazing fagot, which he held up to the face of Tiburcio.
This fagot, light as it was, appeared as if a hundredweight in the hand of the giant, that trembled like an aspen, under the convulsive emotions that were agitating his bosom. He held the flame closed to the countenance of the young man, and scanned his features with eager anxiety.
“But surely,” said he, “you at least know in what country you were born?”
“I do not,” answered Tiburcio. “But why do you ask me? What interest—”