Under the excitement of my discovery I burst into the room with, “Oh! Lumley, you deceiver!” cutting him short in the very middle of those repeated “lovely young Jessies” which constitute the very pith and marrow of the song.
“Why, Max! back already?” cried my friend, starting up with a slightly-confused look, which confirmed my suspicion, and rattling on at a pace which was plainly meant to carry me past the subject. “How you must have walked, to be sure, unless, indeed, you convoyed them only a short part of the way; but that could not have been the case. It would have been so unlike your gallant nature, Max—eh? Well, and how did they get on? Snow not too soft, I hope? Encampment comfortable? But no fear of that of course, with Peter Macnab as leader. No capsizes?”
“None,” said I, seizing advantage of a slight pause; “everything went as well as possible, and the carioles went admirably—especially Jessie’s.”
I looked at him pointedly as I said this, but he coolly stooped to lift a billet and put it on the fire as he rattled on again.
“Yes? That’s just what I hoped for, though I could not be quite sure of it for she has the old one which I had patched up as well as possible. You see, as Macnab said—and of course I agreed with him—it was only fair that the invalid should have the strongest and easiest-going conveyance. By the way, Max, I’ve heard some news. Do you know that that scoundrel Attick is stirring up the tribes against us?”
“No—is he?” said I, quite forgetting the fair Jessie, at this piece of information.
“Yes, and the rascal, I fear, may do us irreparable damage before we can tame him, for he has considerable influence with the young and fiery spirits among the savages—so Big Otter says. Fortunately his power lies only in the tongue, at present, for it seems I broke his arm the night he tried to murder me; but that will mend in time.”
“Very unfortunate,” said I, “that this should happen at the beginning of our career in this region. We must thwart his plans if we can.”
“Moreover,” continued Lumley, with a sly look, “I am told that he has the presumption to aspire to the hand of Waboose!”
“Indeed!” I exclaimed, as a flame of indignation seemed to shoot through my whole frame; “we must thwart his plans in that direction emphatically.”