of the worst years of that scourge of the South--the yellow fever--
and to this dread pestilence he had fallen a victim.

Hugot, the _ex-chasseur_ and attached domestic, who was accustomed to
follow his master like a shadow, had also followed him into the next
world. It was not grief that killed Hugot, though he bore the loss of
his kind master sadly enough. But it was not grief that killed Hugot.
He was laid low by the same disease of which his master had died--the
yellow fever. A week had scarcely passed after the death of the latter,
before Hugot caught the disease, and in a few days he was carried to the
tomb and laid by the side of his "old Colonel."

The Boy Hunters--Basil, Lucien, Francois--became orphans. They knew of
but _one_ relation in the whole world, with whom their father had kept
up any correspondence. This relation was an uncle, and, strange as it
may seem, a Scotchman--a Highlander, who had strayed to Corsica in early
life, and had there married the Colonel's sister. That uncle had
afterwards emigrated to Canada, and had become extensively engaged in
the fur trade. He was now a superintendent or "factor" of the Hudson's
Bay Company, stationed at one of their most remote posts near the shores
of the Arctic Sea! There is a romance in the history of some men wilder
than any fiction that could be imagined.

I have not yet answered the question as to where our Boy Hunters were
journeying in their birch-bark canoe. By this time you will have
divined the answer. Certainly, you will say, they were on their way to
join their uncle in his remote home. For no other object could they be
travelling through the wild regions of the Red River. That supposition
is correct. To visit this Scotch uncle (they had not seen him for
years) was the object of their long, toilsome, and perilous journey.
After their father's death he had sent for them. He had heard of their
exploits upon the prairies; and, being himself of an adventurous
disposition, he was filled with admiration for his young kinsmen, and
desired very much to have them come and live with him. Being now their
guardian, he might command as much, but it needed not any exercise of
authority on his part to induce all three of them to obey his summons.
They had travelled through the mighty forests of the Mississippi, and
upon the summer prairies of the South. These great features of the
earth's surface were to them familiar things, and they were no l