Chapter 12 - Page 2

see him, or hear him bawling for help to bring
in his 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 neighbourhood, and happy will it prove for
the boy if he is well shut of them."

"It seems to me," said Dr. 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!"

"Friend," 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 domestic uncertainty, which may be called a vacuum
where according to the laws of physic, there should exist some pretty
palpable proofs of materiality."

"Don't mind him, don't mind him," cried Esther, observing that the
rest of his auditors listened with an attention which might proceed,
equally, from acquiescence in his proposal or ignorance of its
meaning. "There is a drug in every word he utters."

"Dr. Battius wishes to say," Ellen modestly interposed, "that as some
of us think Asa is in danger, and some think otherwise, the whole
family might pass an hour or two in