butt end of it "gently" to his ear, laid him sprawling at my feet.

On the discharge of the gun, I heard a voice calling out, "Mon Dieu!"
and another, in a plaintive tone, exclaiming, "Ah mon garçon!" This
was all I heard distinctly, when every voice joined in one cry,
"Tueons le crapaud;" and presently the wretched Indian was kicked
and cuffed by as many as could press round him. I called on them to
desist--as well have spoken to the wind!--not a soul heeded my orders.
At length one of them observed, "What occasion is there for more
beating of him--the black dog is dead enough."

I looked about for the person whom I supposed to have been wounded,
in vain--the whole mass was in motion. As soon as the tumult had
subsided, however, I was glad to find that no one had received any
serious injury; the ball had grazed the thigh of a youth (who had
arrived from Montreal on a visit to his father), and lodged in a log
of the building.

The uproar occasioned by the men soon brought the Indians from the
camp about the hut; and perceiving the apparently lifeless body
stretched on the floor, they raised a yell that was reverberated by
the surrounding hills. "Revenge! revenge!" shouted every savage
present. We mustered too strong, however, to permit their threats
being put into execution without great hazard to themselves; which
fact pressed itself so powerfully on their minds, that for the present
they discreetly vented their rage in abuse, and returned to their
quarters. Satisfied by the feeble beating of the Indian's pulse that
the vital spark was not extinct, I would not allow his kinsmen to
remove him. Towards morning, recovering the use of speech, he
inquired, in a voice scarcely audible, if he "had shed the blood of a