“D’ye know, Joe,” he said confidentially, reining up his gallant steed after a sharp gallop—“d’ye know I’ve bin feelin’ awful low for some time past.”
“I know it, lad,” answered Joe, with a quiet smile, in which there was a dash of something that implied he knew more than he chose to express.
Dick felt surprised, but he continued, “I wonder what it could have bin. I never felt so before.”
“’Twas home-sickness, boy,” returned Joe.
“How d’ye know that?”
“The same way as how I know most things—by obsarvation. I’ve bin home-sick myself once, but it was long agone.”
Dick felt much relieved at this candid confession by such a veteran, and he opened up his heart at once, to the evident delight of Henri, who, among other curious partialities, was fond of listening to and taking part in conversations that bordered on the metaphysical. Most conversations that were not connected with eating and hunting were of this nature to Henri.
“Hom’-sik,” he cried, “veech mean bein’ sik of hom’! Hah! dat is fat I am always be, ven I goes hout on de expedition. Oui, vraiment.”
“I always packs up,” continued Joe, paying no attention to Henri’s remark—“I always packs up an’ sots off for home when I gits home-sick. It’s the best cure; an’ when hunters are young like you, Dick, it’s the only cure. I’ve knowed fellers a’most die o’ home-sickness, an’ I’m told they do go under altogether sometimes.”
“Go onder!” exclaimed Henri; “oui, I vas all but die myself ven I fust try to git away from hom’. If I have not git away, I not be here to-day.”
Henri’s idea of home-sickness was so totally opposed to theirs that his comrades only laughed, and refrained from attempting to set him right.
“The fust time I wos took bad with it wos in a country somethin’ like that,” said Joe, pointing to the wide stretch of undulating prairie, dotted with clusters of trees and meandering streamlets, that lay before them. “I had bin out about two months, an’ was makin’ a good thing of it, for game wos plenty, when I began to think somehow more than usual o’ home. My mother wos alive then.”
Joe’s voice sank to a deep, solemn tone as he said this, and for a few minutes he rode on in silence.
“Well, it grew worse and worse. I dreamed o’ home
