As has been intimated, the bee-hunter was fast rising in the favor of the warriors; particularly of those who had a weakness on the score of the stomach.  This is the first great avenue to the favor of man—­the belly ruling all the other members, the brains included.  All this Peter noted, and was now glad to perceive; for, in addition to the favor that Margery had found in his eyes, that wary chief had certain very serious misgivings on the subject of the prudence of attempting to deal harshly with a medicine man of Boden’s calibre.  Touching the whiskey-spring he had been doubtful, from the first; even Crowsfeather’s account of the wonderful glass through which that chief had looked, and seen men reduced to children and then converted into giants, had failed to conquer his scepticism; but he was not altogether proof against what he had that day beheld with his own eyes.  These marvels shook his previous opinion touching the other matters; and, altogether, the effect was to elevate the bee-hunter to a height, that it really appeared dangerous to assail.

While Peter was thus shaken with doubts—­and that, too, on a point on which he had hitherto stood as firm as a rock—­there was another in the crowd, who noted the growing favor of le Bourdon with deep disgust.  This man could hardly be termed a chief, though he possessed a malignant power that was often wielded to the discomfiture of those who were.  He went by the significant appellation of “The Weasel,” a sobriquet that had been bestowed on him for some supposed resemblance to the little pilfering, prowling quadruped after which he was thus named.  In person, and in physical qualities generally, this individual was mean and ill-favored; and squalid habits contributed to render him even less attractive than he might otherwise have been.  He was, moreover, particularly addicted to intemperance; lying, wallowing like a hog, for days at a time, whenever his tribe received any of the ample contribution of fire-water, which it was then more the custom than it is to-day, to send among the aborigines.  A warrior of no renown, a hunter so indifferent as to compel his squaw and pappooses often to beg for food in strange lodges, of mean presence, and a drunkard, it may seem extraordinary that the Weasel should possess any influence amid so many chiefs renowned for courage, wisdom, deeds in arms, on the hunt, and for services around the council-fire.  It was all due to his tongue.  Ungque, or the Weasel, was eloquent in a high degree—­ possessing that variety of his art which most addresses itself to the passions; and, strange as it may seem, men are oftener and more easily led by those who do little else than promise, than by those who actually perform.  A lying and fluent tongue becomes a power of itself, with the masses; subverting reason, looking down justice, brow-beating truth, and otherwise placing the wrong before the right.  This quality the Weasel possessed in a high degree, and was ever willing to use, on occasions