What was he after?  I eyed him over my pipe bowl, but said nothing.  I was minded to tell him to clean the whitefish for our supper, but reflected in time that he would undoubtedly do it badly, so I spoke to Francois instead.  But when I would have gone away the Englishman followed.  He clapped me lightly on the shoulder, a familiarity he had not ventured before, and he put his head on one side with a little bantam swagger.

“If I am an enemy, I am an enemy,” he bowed.  “Yet one question, please, and I swear in the name of our joint father Noah that I ask it with the fairest motives in mind.  Tell me something of what we are going to do.  Is today a sample?”

I could not hold my ill-temper.  He must have led a psalm-singing youth that every attempt at rakishness should make him as piquant as a figure at a masque.

“Yes,” I replied.  “To-day is a sample except that we have been indolent this afternoon.  I made this a semi-holiday as a sop to the men for the added burden I have laid on them.  I wish to do some exploring along the coast here, and we shall have to spend some time hunting.  If you show yourself capable I shall leave you in charge of the camp while we are away.”

This time he bowed gravely.  “Thank you, monsieur.  I have not been blind to the way you have spared me hardship, but when I said that I would do whatever you would teach me, I meant it.  I think that I shall make a good woodsman in time.”

But I laughed.  “You wash yourself too much ever to make a good woodsman,” I told him, and I set him to measuring the meal for our supper, for indeed his hands were well kept, and it was pleasant to see him handle the food.

CHAPTER X

I WAKE A SLEEPER

What enchantment came upon the weather for the next week I do not know.  May is often somewhat sour of visage, but now she smiled from dawn till starlight.  We paddled and hunted and slept, well fed and fire-warmed.  It was more like junketing than business, and we were as amiable as fat-bellied puppies.  Even the Englishman looked content.  We left him in camp when we went to hunt, and on our return he had a boiling pot and hot coals ready for our venison.  I saw that he had won favor with the men.  Yet he kept aloof from all of us, as he had promised.

This had gone on for a week, when one day, after we had placed the Englishman on guard and were tramping back into the timber to see what our eyes and muskets could find, Pierre pointed to a bent tree.  “It looks like a cow’s back,” he ruminated.  “Trees are queer.  Today, where we made camp, I saw a tree that looked like a Huron with his topknot.”

I stopped.  “Where?”

“I told the master.  Near the camp.”

“You think it was a tree?”

Pierre shuffled.  “There are no Hurons here.  This is the Pottawatamie country.  But I have thought about it all day.  It was a queer tree.  Shall I go back and see?”