Though afraid that I might pain him if I put further questions, my curiosity prompted me to inquire what had taken him to the settlements, since he appeared wedded to his wild life.
“Your question arouses the recollection of circumstances I have been endeavouring to forget. I had at one time resolved to abandon my hunter’s life and to return to civilisation. I married and settled at Ohio, but misfortune overtook me, floods destroyed my crops, and all the capital I had saved by years of toil was lost. To regain it I resolved once more to plunge into the wilderness, and set off, leaving my wife and infant child with her father. I was as successful as I expected, and having realised a considerable sum from the furs I had obtained, I returned to the settlement, expecting to find my wife and child with her family. On reaching it, bitter was my disappointment to learn that my father-in-law’s farm had been destroyed by a fearful fire which raged over the country, and that he, taking my wife and child, had set off with some of his neighbours to migrate westward. A report had been circulated that I had been killed by the Indians, my wife consequently had left no message for me. Once more I turned my face westward, hoping to overtake the train, or to find out where the party had located themselves. In vain I searched for them, but at length had too certain evidence that the train had been cut off by Indians, and every person belonging to it massacred.”
“I am afraid in most respects your information was correct,” I observed; and I then told him how on our journey we had come up with a train which had been destroyed as had the one he spoke of, “though it might not be the same,” I added, “for one person escaped, a little girl, who told us that her name was Lily.”
“Lily!” exclaimed the hunter, “that was the name of my child. Did she survive? Where is she?”
I replied that she had lived with us ever since as my parents’ adopted daughter. “Indeed my father and mother and Uncle Denis love her as much as they do any one of us,” I added.
“Uncle Denis!” repeated the hunter, and he seemed lost in thought.
“Young man,” he said at length, “what is your name?”
“Michael Loraine,” I answered.
“And your uncle’s surname?”
I told him.