Ishmael deliberately led the way back towards his rifled
encampment, and ushered the man, whose life a few minutes before had been in
real jeopardy from his resentment, into the presence of his family. Here, with a
very few words of explanation, mingled with scarce but ominous denunciations
against the plunderers, he made his wife acquainted with the state of things on
the Prairies, and announced his own determination to compensate himself for his
broken rest, by devoting the remainder of the night to sleep.
    The trapper gave his ready assent to the measure and adjusted his gaunt form
on the pile of brush that was offered him, with as much composure as a Sovereign
could resign himself to sleep, in the security of his Capital and surrounded by
his armed protectors. The old man did not close his eyes, however, until he had
assured himself, that Ellen Wade was among the females of the family, and that
her relative, or lover, whichever he might be, had observed the caution of
keeping himself out of view. After which he slept though with the peculiar
watchfulness of one long accustomed to vigilance even in the hours of deepest
night.
 

                                   Chapter VI

 »He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,
 As it were too peregrinate, as I may call it.«
                                                 Love's Labor's Lost, V.i.12-14.
 
The anglo-american is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his nation may
claim a descent more truly honorable than that of any other people whose history
is to be credited. Whatever might have been the weaknesses of the original
colonists, their virtues have rarely been disputed. If they were superstitious,
they were sincerely pious, and, consequently, honest. The descendants of these
simple and single minded provincials have been content to reject the ordinary
and artificial means by which honors have been perpetuated in families, and have
substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to the ordeal of the
public estimation, paying as little deference as may be to those who have gone
before him. This forbearance, self denial, or common sense, or by whatever term
it may be thought proper to distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to
the imputation of having an ignoble origin. Were it worth the inquiry, it would
be found that more than a just proportion of the renowned names of the mother
country are, at this hour, to be found in her ci-devant colonies, and it is a
fact well known to the few who have wasted sufficient time to become the masters
of so unimportant a subject,