off in six weeks. So I want to have one more run in the
wilderness in all the freedom of bachelorhood. Will you go with me?"

"`Unpossible,' as Jenkins would say," answered Archie. "Nothing would
please me better, but, duty before pleasure! I've promised to spend a
week along wi' Little Bill at the Whitehorse Plains. Billie has taken a
great fancy to that chief o' the half-breeds, Cuthbert Grant, and we are
goin' to visit him. I've no doubt that Little Bill would let me off,
but I won't be let off."

"Then I must ask Okematan to go with me," said Dan.

"You needn't trouble yourself, for I heard him say that he was goin' off
to see some o' his relations on important business--a great palaver o'
some sort--and Elise told me this morning that she saw him start
yesterday."

"Morel is too busy with his new farm to go," rejoined Dan, "and Jenkins
is too busy helping Morel. Perhaps Dechamp or Bourassin may be more at
leisure. I will go see."

But on search being made, neither Dechamp nor Bourassin was to be found,
and our hero was returning home with the intention of taking a small
hunting canoe and going off by himself, when he chanced to meet with La
Certe.

That worthy seemed unusually depressed, and returned Dan's greeting with
very little of his habitual cheerfulness.

"What's wrong with you, Francois?" asked Dan, anxiously.

"Domestic infelicity," answered La Certe, with a sorrowful shake of the
head.

"What! surely Slowfoot has not taken to being unkind to you?"

"O no! Slowfoot could not be unkind, but she is unhappy; she has lost
her cheerful looks; she does not take everything as she once did; she
does not now let everything go anyhow with that cheerful resignation
which was once her delightful characteristic. She no longer hands the
pipe of peace to our little one--indeed she refuses to let it have the
pipe at all, though the poor child cries for it, and comes to me
secretly, when Slowfoot is out of the way, to beg for a draw. Then, she
scolds me--no, she does not scold. Slowfoot cannot scold. She is too
amiable--but she remonstrates, and that is worse than scolding, for it
enlists myself against myself. O! I am now miserable. My days of
peace are gone!"

"This is all very sad, La Certe," said Dan, in a tone of sympathy.
"What does she remonstrate about?"

"About my laziness! She does it very kindly, very gently--so like her
old self!--but she _does_ it. She says, `Husband; we have g