“The devil it is? Well, Magnet, this surpasses a seaman's philosophy: we old sea-dogs can tell a lubber's nest from a mate's hammock; but I do not think the oldest admiral in his Majesty's fleet can tell a king's smoke from a collier's.”      

       The idea that human beings were in their vicinity, in that ocean of wilderness, had deepened the flush on the blooming cheek and brightened the eye of the fair creature at his side; but she soon turned with a look of surprise to her relative, and said hesitatingly, for both had often admired the Tuscarora's knowledge, or, we might almost say, instinct,—     

       “A pale-face's fire! Surely, uncle, he cannot know that?”      

       “Ten days since, child, I would have sworn to it; but now I hardly know what to believe. May I take the liberty of asking, Arrowhead, why you fancy that smoke, now, a pale-face's smoke, and not a red-skin's?”      

       “Wet wood,” returned the warrior, with the calmness with which the pedagogue might point out an arithmetical demonstration to his puzzled pupil. “Much wet—much smoke; much water—black smoke.”      

       “But, begging your pardon, Master Arrowhead, the smoke is not black, nor is there much of it. To my eye, now, it is as light and fanciful a smoke as ever rose from a captain's tea-kettle, when nothing was left to make the fire but a few chips from the dunnage.”      

       “Too much water,” returned Arrowhead, with a slight nod of the head;       “Tuscarora too cunning to make fire with water! Pale-face too much book, and burn anything; much book, little know.”      

       “Well, that's reasonable, I allow,” said Cap, who was no devotee of learning: “he means that as a hit at your reading, Magnet; for the chief has sensible notions of things in his own way. How far, now, Arrowhead, do you make us, by your calculation, from the bit of a pond that you call the Great Lake, and towards which we have been so many days shaping our course?”      

       The Tuscarora looked at the seaman with quiet superiority as he answered,       “Ontario, like heaven; one sun, and the great traveller will know it.”      

       “Well, I have been a great traveller, I cannot deny; but of all my v'y'ges this has been the longest, the least 

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