hear something move in the brake? it has been cracking the twigs these five minutes. Now tell me what the creatur’ is?”

“I hope nothing ferocious!” exclaimed the Doctor, who still retained a lively impression of his rencounter with the vespertilio horribilis. “You have rifles, friends; would it not be prudent to prime them? for this fowling-piece of mine is little to be depended on.”

“There may be reason in what he says,” returned the trapper, so far complying as to take his piece from the place where it had lain during the repast, and raising its muzzle in the air. “Now tell me the name of the creatur’?”

“It exceeds the limits of earthly knowledge! Buffon himself could not tell whether the animal was a quadruped, or of the order, serpens! a sheep, or a tiger!”

“Then was your buffoon a fool to my Hector! Here; pup!—What is it, dog?—Shall we run it down, pup—or shall we let it pass?”

The hound, which had already manifested to the experienced trapper, by the tremulous motion of his ears, his consciousness of the proximity of a strange animal, lifted his head from his fore paws and slightly parted his lips, as if about to show the remnants of his teeth. But, suddenly abandoning his hostile purpose, he snuffed the air a moment, gaped heavily, shook himself, and peaceably resumed his recumbent attitude.

“Now, Doctor,” cried the trapper, triumphantly, “I am well convinced there is neither game nor ravenous beast in the thicket; and that I call substantial knowledge to a man who is too old to be a spendthrift of his strength, and yet who would not wish to be a meal for a panther!”

The dog interrupted his master by a growl, but still kept his head crouched to the earth.

“It is a man!” exclaimed the trapper, rising. “It is a man, if I am a judge of the creatur’s ways. There is but little said atwixt the hound and me, but we seldom mistake each other’s meaning!”

Paul Hover sprang to his feet like lightning; and, throwing forward his rifle, he cried in a voice of menace—

“Come forward, if a friend; if an enemy, stand ready for the worst!”

“A friend, a white man, and, I hope, a Christian,” returned a voice from the thicket; which opened at the same instant, and at the next the speaker made his appearance.