blind to the way you have spared me hardship, but when I said that I
would do whatever you would teach me, I meant it. I think that I shall
make a good woodsman in time."

But I laughed. "You wash yourself too much ever to make a good
woodsman," I told him, and I set him to measuring the meal for our
supper, for indeed his hands were well kept, and it was pleasant to see
him handle the food.




CHAPTER X

I WAKE A SLEEPER

What enchantment came upon the weather for the next week I do not know.
May is often somewhat sour of visage, but now she smiled from dawn till
starlight. We paddled and hunted and slept, well fed and fire-warmed.
It was more like junketing than business, and we were as amiable as
fat-bellied puppies. Even the Englishman looked content. We left him
in camp when we went to hunt, and on our return he had a boiling pot
and hot coals ready for our venison. I saw that he had won favor with
the men. Yet he kept aloof from all of us, as he had promised.

This had gone on for a week, when one day, after we had placed the
Englishman on guard and were tramping back into the timber to see what
our eyes and muskets could find, Pierre pointed to a bent tree. "It
looks like a cow's back," he ruminated. "Trees are queer. Today,
where we made camp, I saw a tree that looked like a Huron with his