The features were finely cut, sensitive and expressive, and the eyes were very luminous in their glance, and possessed strangely penetrating powers.

In stature the young man was almost as tall as Humphrey, but of a much slighter build; yet he was wiry and muscular, as could well be seen, and plainly well used to the life of the wild woodlands.

His dress was that of the backwoods, dressed deerskin being the chief material used.

Both travellers wore moccasins on their feet, and carried the usual weapons of offence and defence.
Yet Humphrey felt as though this man was in some sort different from those he had met in the woods at rare times when out hunting.
His voice, his words, his phraseology seemed in some sort strange, and he asked him wonderingly: "From whence are you, friends ?" "From the land of the far south--from the rolling plains of the giant Mississippi, that vast river of which perchance you have heard ?" "Ay, verily," answered Humphrey, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.

"I have heard of that great river, which the French King claims to have discovered, and which they say he will guard with a chain of forts right away from Canada, and will thus command all the New World of the West, pinning us English within the limits of that portion of land lying betwixt the ocean and the range of the Allegheny Mountains," and Humphrey waved his hand in that direction, and looked questioningly at the men before him.
He had an impression that all who came from the far south, from the colony of Louisiana, as he had heard it called, must be in some sort French subjects.