Adventure and adventurers > Hudson Bay, or, Everyday life in the wilds of North America

THE GUIDE’S STORY.
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him slowly to the village. No word of complaint or
cry of sorrow escaped from his wife as we laid his
bleeding form in her tent. She seemed to have lost
the power of speech, as she sat, hour after hour, gazing
in unutterable despair on the mangled form of her hus¬
band. Poor Wapwian lingered for a week in a state of
unconsciousness. His skull had been fractured, and he
lay almost in a state of insensibility, and never spoke,
save when, in a fit of delirium, his fancy wandered back
to bygone days, when he ranged the forest with a tiny
bow in chase of little birds and squirrels, strode in the
vigour of early manhood over frozen plains of snow, or
dashed down foaming currents and mighty rivers in his
light canoe. Then a shade would cross his brow as he
thought, perhaps, of his recent struggle with the bear,
and he would again relapse into silence.
“He recovered slightly before his death; and once
he smiled, as if he recognized his wife, but he never
spoke to any one. We scarcely knew when his spirit
fled, so calm and peaceful was his end.
“ His body now reposes beneath the spreading branches
of a lordly pine, near the scenes of his childhood; where
he had spent his youth, and where he met his untimely
end.”
*****
The guide paused, and looked round upon his auditors.
Alas! for the sympathy of man—the half of them had
gone to sleep; and Baptiste, for whose benefit the story
had been related, lay or rather sprawled upon the turf
behind the fire, his shaggy head resting on the decayed
stump of an old tree, and his empty pipe hanging grace-