“Not so—not so,” returned the trapper, shaking his head as one who better understood the qualities of his dog.— “Youth sleeps, ay, and dreams too; but age is awake and watchful. The pup is never false with his nose, and long experience tells me to heed his warnings.”

“Did you ever run him upon the trail of carrion?”

“Why, I must say, that the ravenous beasts have sometimes tempted me to let him loose, for they are as greedy as men, after the venison, in its season; but then I knew the reason of the dog, would tell him the object!—No—no, Hector is an animal known in the ways of man, and will never strike a false trail when a true one is to be followed!”

“Ay, ay, the secret is out! you have run the hound on the track of a wolf, and his nose has a better memory than his master!” said the bee-hunter, laughing.

“I have seen the creatur’ sleep for hours, with pack after pack, in open view. A wolf might eat out of his tray without a snarl, unless there was a scarcity; then, indeed, Hector would be apt to claim his own.”

“There are panthers down from the mountains; I saw one make a leap at a sick deer, as the sun was setting. Go; go you back to the dog, and tell him the truth, father; in a minute, I—”

He was interrupted by a long, loud, and piteous howl from the hound, which rose on the air of the evening, like the wailing of some spirit of the place, and passed off into the prairie, in cadences that rose and fell, like its own undulating surface. The trapper was impressively silent, listening intently. Even the reckless bee-hunter, was struck with the wailing wildness of the sounds. After a short pause the former whistled the dog to his side, and turning to his companions he said with the seriousness, which, in his opinion, the occasion demanded—

“They who think man enjoys all the knowledge of the creaturs of God, will live to be disappointed, if they reach, as I have done, the age of fourscore years. I will not take upon myself to say what mischief is brewing, nor will I vouch that, even, the hound himself knows so much; but that evil is nigh, and that wisdom invites us to avoid it, I have heard from the mouth of one who never lies. I did think, the pup had become unused to the footsteps of man, and that your presence made him uneasy; but his nose has been on a long scent the whole evening, and what I mistook as a notice of your coming, has been intended for something more serious. If the advice of an old man is, then, worth hearkening to, children, you will quickly go different ways to your places of shelter and safety.”

“If I quit Ellen, at such a moment,” exclaimed the youth, “may I—”

“You’ve said enough!” the girl interrupted, by again interposing a hand that might, both by its delicacy and colour, have graced a far more elevated station in life; “my time is out; and we must part, at all events —so good night, Paul—father—good night.”

“Hist!” said the youth, seizing her arm, as she was in the very act of tripping from his side— “Hist! do you hear nothing? There are buffaloes playing their pranks, at no great distance—That sound beats the earth like a herd of the mad scampering devils!”

His two companions listened, as people in their situation would be apt to lend their faculties to discover the meaning of any doubtful noises, especially, when heard after so many and such startling warnings. The unusual sounds were unequivocally though still faintly audible. The youth and his female companion had made several hurried, and vacillating conjectures concerning their nature, when a current of the night air brought the rush of trampling footsteps, too sensibly, to their ears, to render mistake any longer possible.

“I am right!” said the bee-hunter; “a panther is driving a herd before him; or, may be, there is a battle among the beasts.”