chief, Paul Picot," whispered the driver.

"Excuse me," said the colonel, instantly; and the young gentleman
nodded. "Can you tell me if we could see the chief to-day?"

"O yes!" answered the notary in English, "my father is chief. You can
see him"; and passed on with a somewhat supercilious air.

The colonel, in his first hours at Quebec, had bought at a bazaar of
Indian wares the photograph of an Indian warrior in a splendor of
factitious savage panoply. It was called "The Last of the Hurons," and
the colonel now avenged himself for the curtness of M. Picot by styling
him "The Next to the Last of the Hurons."

"Well," said Fanny, who had a wife's willingness to see her husband
occasionally snubbed, "I don't know why you asked him. I'm sure nobody
wants to see that old chief and his wretched bead trumpery again."

"My dear," answered the colonel, "wherever Americans go, they like to be
presented at court. Mr. Arbuton, here, I've no doubt has been introduced
to the crowned heads of the Old World, and longs to pay his respects to
the sovereign of Lorette. Besides, I always call upon the reigning
prince when I come to Lorette. The coldness of the heir-apparent shall
not repel me."

The colonel led the way up the principal lane of the village. Some of
the cabins were ineffectually whitewashed, but none of them were so
uncleanly within as the outside prophesied. At the doors and windows sat
women and young girls working moccasins; here and there stood a well-fed
mother of a family with an infant Huron in her arms. They all showed the
traces of white blood, as did the little ones who trooped after the
strangers and demanded charity as clamorously as so many Italians; only
a few faces were of a clear dark, as if stained by walnut-juice, and it
was plain that the Hurons were fading, if not dying out. They responded
with a queer mixture of French liveliness and savage stolidity to the
colonel's jocose advances. Great lean dogs lounged about the thresholds;
they and the women and children were alone visible; there were no men.
None of the houses were fenced, save the chief's; this stood behind a
neat grass plot, across which, at the moment our travellers came up, two
youngish women were trailing in long morning-gowns and eye-glasses. The
chief's house was a handsome cottage, papered and carpeted, with a huge
stove in the parlor, where also stood a table exposing the bead trumpery
of Mrs. Ellison's scorn. A full-bodied elder