old me of!"

"Then Nelly has not done me credit for what I trust I deserve," returned
the single-minded Doctor, "for I am not of the phlebotomising school at
all; greatly preferring the practice which purifies the blood instead of
abstracting it."

"It was a blunder of mine, good stranger; the girl called you a skilful
man."

"Therein she may have exceeded my merits," Dr. Battius continued,
bowing with sufficient meekness. "But Ellen is a good, and a kind, and a
spirited girl, too. A kind and a sweet girl I have ever found Nell Wade
to be!"

"The devil you have!" cried Paul, dropping the morsel he was sucking,
from sheer reluctance to abandon the hump, and casting a fierce and
direct look into the very teeth of the unconscious physician. "I reckon,
stranger, you have a mind to bag Ellen, too!"

"The riches of the whole vegetable and animal world united, would not
tempt me to harm a hair of her head! I love the child, with what may he
called amor naturalis--or rather paternus--the affection of a father."

"Ay--that, indeed, is more befitting the difference in your years,"
Paul coolly rejoined, stretching forth his hand to regain the rejected
morsel. "You would be no better than a drone at your time of day, with a
young hive to feed and swarm."

"Yes, there is reason, because there is natur', in what he says,"
observed the trapper: "but, friend, you have said you were a dweller in
the camp of one Ishmael Bush?"

"True; it is in virtue of a compactum--"

"I know but little of the virtue of packing, though I follow trapping,
in my old age, for a livelihood. They tell me that skins are well kept
in the new fashion; but it is long since I have left off killing more
than I need for food and garments. I was an eye-witness, myself, of the
manner in which the Siouxes broke into your encampment, and drove off
the cattle; stripping the poor man you call Ishmael of his smallest
hoofs, counting even the cloven feet."

"Asinus excepted," muttered the Doctor, who by this time was discussing
his portion of the hump, in utter forgetfulness of all its scientific
attributes. "Asinus domesticus Americanus excepted."

"I am glad to hear that so many of them are saved, though I know not
the value of the animals you name; which is nothing uncommon, seeing how
long it is that I have been out of the settlements. But can you tell me,
friend, what the traveller carries under the white cloth, he guards with
teeth as sharp as a wolf th