load.«
    »Tis little help, that a son of mine will call for, to shoulder a buck or to
quarter your wild beef!« returned the Mother. »And you, Abiram, to say so
uncertain a thing! you, who said yourself, that the red skins had been prowling
around this place, no later than the yesterday.«
    »I!« exclaimed her brother, hastily, as if anxious to retract an error. »I
said it then, and I say it now, and so you will find it to be. The Tetons are in
our neighborhood, and happy will it prove for the boy, if he is well shut of
them.«
    »It seems to me,« said Doctor Battius, speaking with the sort of
deliberation and dignity one is apt to use, after having thoroughly ripened his
opinions by sufficient reflection, »it seems to me, a man but little skilled in
the signs and tokens of Indian warfare, especially as practised in these remote
plains, but one, who I may say without vanity has some insight into the
mysteries of nature; it seems, then, to me thus humbly qualified, that when
doubts exist, in a matter of moment, it would, always be the wisest course to
appease them.«
    »No more of your doctoring for me,« cried the grum Esther, »no more of your
quiddities in a healthy family, say I. Here, was I doing well, only a little out
of sorts with over instructing the young, and you dos'd me with a drug, that
hangs about my tongue, like a pound weight on a humming bird's wing.«
    »Is the medicine out?« drily demanded Ishmael: »it must be a rare dose that
gives a heavy feel to the tongue of old Eester!«
    »Friends,« continued the Doctor, waving his hand for the angry wife to
maintain the peace, »that it cannot perform all that is said of it, the very
charge of good Mrs. Bush is a sufficient proof. But to speak of the absent, Asa.
There is doubt, as to his fate, and there is a proposition to solve it. Now in
the natural sciences, truth is always a desideratum, and I confess it would seem
to be equally so, in the present case of domestick uncertainty, which may be
called a vacuum, where, according to the laws of physick, there should exist
some pretty palpable proofs of materiality.«
    »Don't mind him, don't mind him