affronted gaze of Christian people. This was not
pleasing, he said, not even to the French. He was evidently growing old
and his heart was softening!

Lured by a vague rumor expressed among the party that those he sought
had been removed to a remote Indian town on the Tsullakee River, Hamish
broke away from Monsieur Galette, despite all remonstrances, to seek
those he loved in the further west--if slaves, as Monsieur Galette
suggested, he would rather share their slavery than without them enjoy
the freedom of the king. And, constrained to receive two snuffy kisses
on either cheek, he left Monsieur Galette shedding his frequent tears to
mix with the snuff on his pointed muzzle.

And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the
long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their
destination, to find only disappointment and a gnawing doubt, and a
strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here,
reading Monsieur Galette's letter, looked at one another with grave
faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the
members of the family he sought were somewhere--oh, far away!--in the
country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so
great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the
winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his
mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur
trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French
flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well--they
made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to
have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said
otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and pronouns disagreed, and
dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of
place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These
traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition
and also wore ear-rings--but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he
left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld.

And so down and down the Tsullakee River he went, and after the
junction of the great tributary with the Ohio, he plied his paddle
against the strong current and with the French hunter came into the
placid waters of the beautiful Sewanee, or Cumberland, flouted by the
north wind, his way wi