has it not also its glimpses of regret?--and who can say that the former
compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on
the veranda,--the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert-
flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the
warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,--unutterably graceful in the
thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,--Zosime MacGillivray, perfect
type and model of the style and beauty of the _brulée_. She was the only
child of a retired trader of the old North-West Fur Company and his Indian
wife; had been partly educated in England; possessed rather more than the
then average Colonial allowance of accomplishments; and was, altogether,
so much in harmony with my roving forest-inclinations, that I sometimes
thought, half seriously, how pleasant and respectable it would be to have
one such at the head of one's camp-equipage, and how much nicer a
companion she would be on a hunt than that disreputable old scoundrel,
Zach Hiver.

"Pack the _tobaugan_, Zach! The sun will come out strong by and by, and
the longer we tarry here, the heavier the snow will be for our stretch to
the Citadel. Up, there! _lève-toi, cochon!_" shouted I, in the elegant
terms of address which experience had taught me were the only ones that
had any effect upon the stolid sensibilities of the half-breed,--at the
same time administering to him a kick that produced a _thud_ and a grunt,
as if actually bestowed on the unclean quadruped to which I had just
likened him. The ragamuffin was very slow this time in getting the traps
together on the _tobaugan_, and, if I had not attended to the matter
myself, the moose trophy, at least, would in all probability have been
left to perish, and would never have pointed a moral and adorned a tale,
as it now does, in its exalted position among the reminiscences of things
past. At length we got under way, and, as a walk over the open plain
offered a pleasing variety to a man who had been feeling his way so long