upon the Red-men, but his musings were deeply tinged with the bright
hues of a _first_ adventure. The mountains, the plains, the Indians,
the bears, the buffaloes, and a thousand other objects, danced wildly
before his mind's eye, and his blood careered through his veins and
flushed his forehead as he thought of what he should see and do, and
felt the elastic vigour of youth respond in sympathy to the light
spring of his active little steed. He was a lover of nature, too, and
his flashing eyes glanced observantly from side to side as they swept
along--sometimes through glades of forest trees, sometimes through
belts of more open ground and shrubbery; anon by the margin of a
stream or along the shores of a little lake, and often over short
stretches of flowering prairie-land--while the firm, elastic turf sent
up a muffled sound from the tramp of their mettlesome chargers. It was
a scene of wild, luxuriant beauty, that might almost (one could fancy)
have drawn involuntary homage to its bountiful Creator from the lips
even of an infidel.

After a time Joe Blunt reined up, and they proceeded at an easy
ambling pace. Joe and his friend Henri were so used to these beautiful
scenes that they had long ceased to be enthusiastically affected by
them, though they never ceased to delight in them.

"I hope," said Joe, "that them sodgers'll go their ways soon. I've no
notion o' them chaps when they're left at a place wi' nothin' to do
but whittle sticks."

"Why, Joe!" exclaimed Dick Varley in a tone of surprise, "I thought
you were admirin' the beautiful face o' nature all this time, and
ye're only thinkin' about the sodgers. Now, that's strange!"