l contended, but complacently and without rancour,
that had the Indians taken up the trail he had advised from the first
it would have led them straight to the ford. They heard him and went
on skinning the moose, standing knee deep in the bloody water, for
the body was too heavy to be dragged ashore without infinite labour.
Menehwehna found and handed him the bullet, which had glanced across
and under the shoulder-blade, and flattened itself against one of the
ribs on the other side. Barboux pocketed it in high good humour; and
when their work was done--an ugly work, from which Bateese kept his
eyes averted--a steak or two cut out, with the tongue, and the
carcass left behind to rot in the stream--he praised them for brave
fellows. They listened as indifferently as they had listened to his
revilings.

This shot which slew the moose was the last fired on the upward
journey. They had followed the stream up to the hill ridges, where
rapid succeeded rapid; and two days of all but incessant portage
brought them out above the forest, close beneath the naked ridges
where but a few pines straggled.

Bateese pointed out a path by following which, as he promised,
they would find a river to carry them down into the St. Lawrence.
He unfolded a scheme. There were trees beside that farther stream--
elm-trees, for example--blown down and needing only to be stripped;
his own eyes had seen them. Portage up and over the ridge would be
back-breaking work. Let the canoe, therefore, be abandoned--hidden
somewhere by the headwaters--and let the Indians hurry ahead and rig
up a light craft to carry the party downstream. They had axes to
strip the bark and thongs to close it at bow and stern. What more
was needed? As for the loss of his canoe, he understood the
sergeant's to be State business, requiring dispatch; and if so,
M. the Intendant at Montreal would recompense him. Nay, he himself
might be travelling back this way before long, and then how handy to
pick up a canoe on this side of the hills!

The sergeant _bravo_-ed and clapped the little man on his back,
drawing tears of pain. The canoe was hauled up and stowed in a damp
corner of the undergrowth under a mat of pine-branches, well screened
from the sun's rays, and the travellers began to trudge on foot, in
two divisions. The Indians led, with John and Barboux, the latter
being minded to survey the country with them from the top of the
ridge and afterwards allow them t