But at Huwhasee Town Hamish heard naught of those his memory cherished. He was greatly amazed at the courage with which Monsieur Galette urged upon the head-men that some measures should be taken to induce Oconostota to remove that fence, of which they had heard at Choté, which had been built of the bones of the massacred garrison, and give them burial from out the affronted gaze of Christian people. This was not pleasing, he said, not even to the French. He was evidently growing old and his heart was softening!
Lured by a vague rumor expressed among the party that those he sought had been removed to a remote Indian town on the Tsullakee River, Hamish broke away from Monsieur Galette, despite all remonstrances, to seek those he loved in the further west--if slaves, as Monsieur Galette suggested, he would rather share their slavery than without them enjoy the freedom of the king. And, constrained to receive two snuffy kisses on either cheek, he left Monsieur Galette shedding his frequent tears to mix with the snuff on his pointed muzzle.
And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their destination, to find only disappointment and a gnawing doubt, and a strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here, reading Monsieur Galette's letter, looked at one another with grave faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the members of the family he sought were somewhere--oh, far away!--in the country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well--they made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and pronouns disagreed, and dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition and also wore ear-rings--but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld.