iarity, half bewildered by Boulanger's words,
Isidore gazed about him; but the broken musket, the extinguished
camp-fire, the rudely tied up bundle of spoils, such as none but a Red
Indian would prize, were to him wholly without meaning. To add to his
perplexity, Boulanger, who had been scrutinising everything around them
with eager curiosity, suddenly quitted his side, and vaulting over a
fence, disappeared in the wood that skirted the clearing.

"Hang the fellow!" muttered Isidore. "This is a little too bad. If he
expects me to follow him everywhere, he is mistaken. A pretty thing,
truly, if I were to miss him and lose myself in this out-of-the-way
place, I'll let him know that it is his business to attend to me
instead of running about to look after dead savages, or live Englishmen
either."

The guide, however, soon reappeared, saying, as he rejoined his
companion, "There are red skins enough lying in the wood yonder. They
must have been surprised here after a successful attack on some other
place, and the people here have had little or no share in it, but have
been helped by some much stronger force than they could muster. That's
plain enough, at all events."

"It may be all plain enough to you," replied Isidore. "As for me, I
can see there has been a fight between the white men and savages; but
more than that I cannot make out, and in truth I don't see that it
matters much to us, except that we are disappointed of our expected
quarters for the night."

There was a look of anger not wholly unmixed with contempt on the face
of the Canadian as Isidore concluded these remarks.

"Truly," said he, "I had forgotten, in my anxiety for the fate of many
who were no strangers to me, that monsieur may lose his supper and his
bed."

The rebuke was not thrown away. Beneath all his aristocratic pride,
and the selfishness that had grown upon him, Isidore still had a heart
capable of sympathy and compassion, and there was a nobleness in his
nature which at once compelled him to avow his error even to so humble
a companion.

"Forgive me, my friend," said he; "I have deserved your reproof. Come,
let us at least see before we go further whether we can find in any of
these ruined buildings something that may give us a clue to what has
befallen your friends. As it is clear that the Englishmen had the best
of it, perhaps we may find that the people of this place have only gone
elsewhere for temporary shelter."

Boula