“More than a month ago,” said the young officer, “I left the country of the Abnakis, accompanied by my father, a soldier, and an Indian guide. We were bearing very important dispatches to the governor of the colony. We travelled along through the forest for several days without any accident, when, one evening, overcome with fatigue, we lit a fire and camped for the night near an Indian cemetery. According to the custom of the savages, every corpse was wrapped in a shroud of coarse bark, and placed high above the ground on four stakes. Bows and arrows, tomahawks, and some ears of maize were hung against these rude graves, and shook and rattled as the wind passed over them. Our own savage was seated just in front of me, on the half-decayed trunk of a pine-tree that had fallen to the ground, and seemed half buried in profound meditation. The fitful flames of the fire threw a weird light over his gigantic frame. An Indian might readily have compared him to one of the superb maples of our forest, had he been able at the same time to have united with it the cunning of the serpent and the agility of the elk. His height was increased by a quantity of black, red, and white feathers tied with his hair on the top of his head. His ferocious features, piercing black eyes, his tomahawk and long knife, half concealed by the trophy of scalps which hung from his belt, gave him a wild and sanguinary appearance. The night was dark and bitter cold. The low and unequal arch formed by the interlacing branches of the trees, and illuminated by the flickering light of our pine-wood fire, seemed like a vast cavern, and the old trunks of the rotten trees, which were buried in the snow, looked like the corpses of giants strewn around. The birches, covered with their white bark, seemed like wandering phantoms in the midst of this _débris_, and the dull rumbling of the distant torrent, and the wind moaning and whistling through the leafless branches, completed the weird funereal aspect of the place. Any one slightly superstitious could easily believe he heard the sighing spirits of the Indian warriors who lay buried so near us. In spite of myself, a shiver of horror ran through my veins. Here, in the midst of all this grim rubbish, where every rock and tree was transformed by the shadows into as many spectres watching his movements; our audacious savage appeared as grave and tranquil as if he had been in his own cabin. “‘Comrade,’ said I to him, ‘do you think we need fear any danger still from those Iroquois whose trail we discovered yesterday?’ “‘Has my brother already forgotten that we found it again this morning?’ “‘But there were only two,’ said I. “‘ Yes; but an Iroquois can very quickly communicate with his comrades.’ “‘But these were not on the war-path; they were hunting an elk.’ “‘Yes; but the snow is deep, and they could soon kill him without much fatigue, and then—’ “‘Well!’ “‘And then, their hunger once satisfied—’ “‘Finish!’