s pretty well there by this time."

I felt that he was speaking the truth, and my heart sunk within me; but
to make sure, I ran on to the house at which Captain Dean and Mary had
lodged. The woman, who was a French Canadian, received me very kindly,
and seemed to enter into my feelings when she corroborated the account I
had heard. She did not know exactly where the ship had gone; but she
said that my friends were very sorry when I did not come back at the
time appointed. At last Monsieur the captain grew angry, and said he
was afraid I was an idle fellow, and preferred the vagabond life of a
hunter to the hardier though nobler work of a seaman; but "_ma pauvre
petite_," as she called Mary, took my part, and said she was certain
some accident had happened to me, or I should have been back when I
promised. "Sweet Mary, I knew that she would defend me," I muttered;
"and yet how little do I deserve her confidence!"

"Ah, she is indeed a sweet child," observed Madame Durand, divining my
thoughts; "she cried very much indeed when the ship had to sail away
without you, and nothing would comfort the poor dear."

This information, though very flattering to me, added to my regret. I
was now obliged to consider what I should next do. After the free wild
life I had been leading, the idea of returning to Ireland was odious to
me. I can scarcely now account for my conduct in this respect, but I
had but once written home on my arrival at Quebec; and during my long
excursions to the backwoods, I never had time. I was now ashamed to
write--I seldom ever thought of those at home. I had sunk, I felt, from
their grade, whenever I recollected them. My whole attention had been
for so long occupied with the present, that the past was, as it were, a
blank, or as a story which I had read in some book, and had almost
forgotten. I therefore hardly for a moment thought of going back, if I
did so at all; but I was anxious to fall in again with Captain Dean. I
fancied the pleasures of a sea life more than those of a hunter, but I
was not yet altogether tired of the backwoods. I had still a hankering
to trap a few more beavers, and to shoot some more raccoons and deer.

On making further inquiries of the ship-broker, I discovered that there
was a possibility of Captain Dean's going to New Orleans, and I at once
formed the idea of finding my way, by land and river, to that city. I
knew a little more of the geography of the country tha