“A famous breeding place this must be for ducks,” observed Louis.
“And for flowers,” said Catharine, “and for grapes and cranberries. There is always some beauty or some usefulness to be found, however lonely the spot.”
“A fine place for musk-rats, and minks, and fishes,” said Hector, looking round. “The old trapper knew what he was about when he made his lodge near this pond. And there, sure enough, is the log-hut, and not so bad a one either,” and scrambling up the bank he entered the deserted little tenement, well pleased to find it in tolerable repair. There were the ashes on the stone hearth, just as it had been left years back by the old trapper; some rough hewn shelves, a rude bedstead of cedar poles still occupied a corner of the little dwelling; heaps of old dry moss and grass lay upon the ground; and the little squaw pointed with one of her silent laughs to a collection of broken egg-shells, where some wild duck had sat and hatched her downy brood among the soft materials which she had found and appropriated to her own purpose. The only things pertaining to the former possessor of the log-hut were an old, rusty, battered tin pannikin, now, alas! unfit for holding water; a bit of a broken earthen whisky jar; a rusty nail, which Louis pounced upon, and pocketed, or rather pouched,--for he had substituted a fine pouch of deer-skin for his worn-out pocket; and a fishing-line of good stout cord, which was wound on a splinter of red redar, and carefully stuck between one of the rafters and the roof of the shanty. A rusty but efficient hook was attached to the line, and Louis, who was the finder, was quite overjoyed at his good fortune in making so valuable an addition to his fishing-tackle. Hector got only an odd worn-out mocassin, which he chucked into the little pond in disdain; while Catharine declared she would keep the old tin pot as a relic, and carefully deposited it in the canoe.
As they made their way into the interior of the island, they found that there were a great many fine sugar maples which had been tapped by some one, as the boys thought, by the old trapper; but Indiana, on examining the incisions in the trees, and the remnants of birch-bark vessels that lay mouldering on the earth below them, declared them to have been the work of her own people; and long and sadly did the young girl look upon these simple memorials of a race of whom she was the last living remnant. The young girl stood there in melancholy mood, a solitary, isolated being, with no kindred tie upon the earth to make life dear to her; a stranger in the land of her fathers, associating with those whose ways were not her ways, nor their thoughts her thoughts; whose language was scarcely known to her, whose God was not the God of her fathers. Yet the dark eyes of the Indian girl were not dimmed with tears as she thought of these things; she had learned of her people to suffer, and be still.