understand. A small pig with feeble intellect and disordered
nerves might have equalled--even surpassed--the tones of that violin,
but it could not hope to have beaten the volunteer's time. That,
performed on a board by the volunteer's foot, automatically, beat
everything that we have ever heard of in the musical way from the days
of Eden till now.

Only four members of the two households failed to take a violently
active part in that festive gathering. Jessie Davidson had conveniently
sprained her ankle for the occasion, and thus was set free to sit
between the wheeled chairs of the two Duncans, and act as a sympathetic
receptacle of their varied commentaries. Her mother, being too stout
for active service, sat beside them and smiled universal benignity. Her
little maid, Louise, chanced to be ill. Peter Davidson's case, however,
was the worst. He had gone off in company with Okematan to visit a camp
of Cree Indians, intending to be back in time, but his horse had gone
lame while yet far from home, and as it was impossible to procure
another at the time, he was fain to grin and bear it. Meanwhile Antoine
Dechamp had been pressed into the service, and took his place as
best-man to Fred Jenkins--a position which he filled to admiration,
chiefly owing to the fact that he had never served in such a capacity
before.

Late on the following evening La Certe sat by his own fireside, somewhat
exhausted by the festivities of the day before, and glaring
affectionately at Slowfoot, who was stirring something in a pot over the
fire. The little one--rapidly becoming a big one, and unquestionably by
that time a girl--crouched at her father's side, sound asleep, with her
head resting on his leg. She no longer cried for a pull at her father's
pipe.

"Have you heard that Kateegoose is dead?" asked Slowfoot.

"No--how did he die?"

"He was met on the plains by enemies, killed, and scalped."

"That is sad--very sad," said La Certe.

"The world is well rid of him," observed Slowfoot; "he was a bad man."

"Yes," responded her lord; "it is necessary to get rid of a bad man
somehow--but--but it is sad--very sad--to kill and scalp him."

La Certe passed his fingers softly among the locks of his sleeping child
as if the fate of Kateegoose were suggestive! Then, turning, as from a
painful subject, he asked--

"Does our little one never smoke now?"

"No--never."

"Does she never wish for it?"

"Slowfoot cannot tell what