longer Four-Legs
continued his pratings the higher mounted the fever of the patient, and
the more intolerable became the pain of head, back, and limbs.

At length the old man arrived at the climax of what he had to say. "It
was not good for a young man, suffering with sickness, and away from his
family, to be without a home and a wife. He had a nice daughter at home,
handsome and healthy, a capital nurse, the best hand in all the tribe at
trapping beaver and musk-rats. He was coming down again in the spring,
and he would bring her with him, and Shaw-nee-aw-kee should see that he
had told no falsehood about her. Should he go now, and bring his
daughter the next time he came?"

Stunned with his importunate babble, and anxious only for rest and
quiet, poor Shaw-nee-aw-kee eagerly assented, and the chief took his
departure.

So nearly had his disorder been aggravated to delirium, that the young
man forgot entirely, for a time, the interview and the proposal which
had been made him. But it was recalled to his memory some months after,
when Four-Legs made his appearance, bringing with him a squaw of mature
age, and a very Hecate for ugliness. She carried on her shoulders an
immense pack of furs, which, approaching with her awkward _criss-cross_
gait, she threw at his feet, thus marking, by an Indian custom, her
sense of the relation that existed between them.

The conversation with her father now flashed across his mind, and he
began to be sensible that he had got into a position that it would
require some skill to extricate himself from.

He bade one of the young clerks take up the pack and carry it into the
magazine where the furs were stored; then he coolly went on talking with
the chief about indifferent matters.

_Miss Four-Legs_ sat awhile with a sulky, discontented air; at length
she broke out,--

"Humph! he seems to take no more notice of me than if I was nobody!"

He again turned to the clerk.--"Give her a calico shirt and half a dozen
bread-tickets."

This did not dissipate the gloom on her countenance. Finding that he
must commence the subject, the father says,--

"Well, I have brought you my daughter, according to our agreement. How
do you like her?"

"Ah, yes--she is a very nice young woman, and would make a first-rate
wife, I have no doubt. But do you know a very strange thing has happened
since you were here? Our father, Governor Cass,[10] has sent for me to
come to Detroit, that he may send me am