Dick felt surprised, but he continued, "I wonder what it could have bin. I never felt so before." "'Twas home-sickness, boy," returned Joe. "How d'ye know that?" "The same way as how I know most things--by experience an' obsarvation. I've bin home-sick myself once, but it was long, long agone." Dick felt much relieved at this candid confession by such a bronzed veteran, and, the chords of sympathy having been struck, he opened up his heart at once, to the evident delight of Henri, who, among other curious partialities, was extremely fond of listening to and taking part in conversations that bordered on the metaphysical, and were hard to be understood. Most conversations that were not connected with eating and hunting were of this nature to Henri. "Hom'-sik," he cried, "veech mean bein' sik of hom'! Hah! dat is fat I am always be, ven I goes hout on de expedition. Oui, vraiment." "I always packs up," continued Joe, paying no attention to Henri's remark--"I always packs up an' sets off for home when I gits home-sick. It's the best cure; an' when hunters are young like you, Dick, it's the only cure. I've knowed fellers a'most die o' home-sickness, an' I'm told they _do_ go under altogether sometimes." "Go onder!" exclaimed Henri; "oui, I vas all but die myself ven I fust try to git away from hom'. If I have not git away, I not be here to-day." Henri's idea of home-sickness was so totally opposed to theirs that his comrades only laughed, and refrained from attempting to set him right. "The fust time I wos took bad with it wos in a country somethin' like that," said Joe, pointing to the wide stretch of undulating prairie, dotted with clusters of trees and meandering streamlets, that lay before them. "I had bin out about two months, an' was makin' a good thing of it, for game wos plenty, when I began to think somehow more than usual o' home. My mother wos alive then." Joe's voice sank to a deep, solemn tone as he said this, and for a few minutes he rode on in silence. "Well, it grew worse and worse. I dreamed o' home all night an' thought of it all day, till I began to shoot bad, an' my comrades wos gittin' tired o' me; so says I to them one night, says I, 'I give out, lads; I'll make tracks for the settlement to-morrow.' They tried to laugh me out of it at first, but it was no go, so I packed up, bid them good-day, an' sot off alone on a trip o' five hundred miles. The very first mile o' the way back I began to mend, and before two days I wos all right again." Joe was interrupted at this point by the sudden appearance of a solitary horseman on the brow of an eminence not half-a-mile distant. The three friends instantly drove their pack-horses behind a clump of trees; but not in time to escape the vigilant eye of the Red-man, who uttered a loud shout, which brought up a band of his comrades at full gallop. "Remember, Henri," cried Joe Blunt, "our errand is one of _peace_."