“’Tis remarkable! wonderful! edifying!” returned the lover of nature, good-humouredly recovering his wig, with twinkling eyes and a husky voice. “’Tis rare and commendable. Though I doubt not in the exact order of causes and effects.”

With this sudden outbreaking, however, the commotion instantly subsided; the three spectators clustering around the trapper with a species of awe, at beholding the tears of one so aged.

“It must be so, or how could he be so familiar with a history that is little known beyond my own family,” at length the youth observed, not ashamed to acknowledge how much he had been affected, by unequivocally drying his own eyes.

“True!” echoed Paul; “if you want any more evidence I will swear to it! I know every word of it myself to be true as the gospel!”

“And yet we had long supposed him dead!” continued the soldier. “My grandfather had filled his days with honour, and he had believed himself the junior of the two.”

“It is not often that youth has an opportunity of thus looking down on the weakness of age!” the trapper observed, raising his head, and looking around him with composure and dignity. “That I am still here, young man, is the pleasure of the Lord, who has spared me until I have seen fourscore long and laborious years, for his own secret ends. That I am the man I say, you need not doubt; for why should I go to my grave with so cheap a lie in my mouth?”

“I do not hesitate to believe; I only marvel that it should be so! But why do I find you, venerable and excellent friend of my parents, in these wastes, so far from the comforts and safety of the lower country?”

“I have come into these plains to escape the sound of the axe; for here surely the chopper can never follow! But I may put the like question to yourself. Are you of the party which the States have sent into their new purchase, to look after the natur’ of the bargain they have made?”

“I am not. Lewis is making his way up the river, some hundreds of miles from this. I come on a private adventure.”

“Though it is no cause of wonder, that a man whose strength and eyes have failed him as a hunter, should be seen nigh the haunts of the beaver, using a trap instead of a rifle, it is strange that one so young and prosperous, and bearing the commission of the Great Father, should be moving among the prairies, without even a camp-colourman to do his biddings!”

“You would think my reasons sufficient did you know them, as know them you shall if you are disposed to listen to my story. I think you all honest, and men who would rather aid than betray one bent on a worthy object.”

“Come, then, and tell us at your leisure,” said the trapper, seating himself, and beckoning to the youth to follow his example. The latter willingly complied; and after Paul and the Doctor had disposed of themselves to their several likings, the new comer entered into a narrative of the singular reasons which had led him so far into the deserts.