turned back shivering. The illumined hut, from many a chink and crevice,
shot forth into the gloom long streams of light athwart the twisted
boughs. He stooped and entered. All within glowed red and fiery around
the blazing pine-knots where, like brutes in their kennel, were gathered
the savage crew. He stepped to his place, over recumbent bodies and
leggined and moccasined limbs, and seated himself on the carpet of spruce
boughs. Here a tribulation awaited him, the crowning misery of his
winter-quarters,--worse, as he declares, than cold, heat, and dogs.

Of the three brothers who had invited him to join the party, one, we have
seen, was the hunter, Mestigoit; another, the sorcerer; and the third,
Pierre, whom, by reason of his falling away from the Faith, Le Jeune
always mentions as the Apostate. He was a weak-minded young Indian,
wholly under the influence of his brother, the sorcerer, who, if not more
vicious, was far more resolute and wily. From the antagonism of their
respective professions, the sorcerer hated the priest, who lost no
opportunity of denouncing his incantations, and who ridiculed his
perpetual singing and drumming as puerility and folly. The former,
being an indifferent hunter, and disabled by a disease which he had
contracted, depended for subsistence on his credit as a magician; and,
in undermining it, Le Jeune not only outraged his pride, but threatened
his daily bread. [ 1 ] He used every device to retort ridicule on his
rival. At the outset, he had proffered his aid to Le Jeune in his study
of the Algonquin; and, like the Indian practical jokers of Acadia in the
case of Father Biard, [ See "Pioneers of France," 268. ] palmed off upon
him the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things
spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to
explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he was
interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws. And now,
as Le Jeune took his place in the circle, the sorcerer bent upon him his