bitants_ of the
hillside, who could track the forest to every Indian haunt within a
week's march of the city. After putting my men on a trail with
instructions to send back an Indian courier to report each night, I
hunted up an old _habitant_ guide, named Paul Larocque, who had often
helped me to thread the woods of Quebec after big game. Now Paul was
habitually as silent as a dumb animal, and sportsmen had nicknamed him
The Mute; but what he lacked in speech he made up like other wild
creatures in a wonderful acuteness of eye and ear. Indeed, it was
commonly believed among trappers that Paul possessed some nameless sense
by which he could actually _feel_ the presence of an enemy before
ordinary men could either see, or hear. For my part, I would be willing
to pit that "feel" of Paul's against the nose of any hound that
dog-fanciers could back.

"Paul," said I, as the _habitant_ stood before me licking the short stem
of an inverted clay pipe, "there's an Indian, a bad Indian, an Iroquois,
Paul,"--I was particular in describing the Indian as an Iroquois, for
Paul's wife was a Huron from Lorette--"An Iroquois, who stole a white
woman and a little boy from the Chateau three days ago, in the morning."

There, I paused to let the facts soak in; for The Mute digested
information in small morsels. Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was not
at all the picturesque figure which fancy has painted of his class.
Instead of the red toque, which artists place on the heads of
_habitants_, he wore a cloth cap with ear flaps coming down to be tied
under his chin. His jacket was an ill-fitting garment, the cast-off coat
of some well-to-do man, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above
brightly beaded moccasins. When I paused, Paul fixed his eyes on an
invisible spot in the snow and ruminated. Then he hitched the baggy
trousers up, pulled the red scarf, that held them to his waist,
tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for me to go on.

"That Iroquois, who belongs to the North-West trappers----"

"_Pays d'En Haut?_" asks Paul, speaking for the first time.

"Yes," I answered, "and they all disappeared with the woman and the
child the day before the storm."

The Mute's eyes were back on the snow.

"Now," said I, "I'll make you a rich man if you take me straight to the
place where he's hiding."

Paul's eyes looked up with the question of how much.

"Five pounds a day." This was four more than we paid for the carib