the last time I hunted there."

"In that case," observed the laughing Middlemore, to whom the opportunity was irresistible, "you are going out on a WILD GOOSE CHASE, indeed. Your prospects of a good hunt, as you call it, cannot be said to be SURE AS A GUN, for in regard to the latter, you may depend some one has discovered and RIFLED it before this."

"You seem to have laid in a store of provisions for this trip, Desborough," remarked Henry Grantham; "how long do you purpose being absent?"

"I guess three or four days," was the sullen reply.

"Three or four days! why your bag contains," and the officer partly raised a corner of the sail, "provisions for a week, or, at least, for TWO for half that period."

The manner in which the TWO was emphasised did not escape the attention of the settler. He was visibly disconcerted, nor was he at all reassured when the younger officer proceeded:

"By the bye, Desborough, we saw you leave the hut with a companion--what has become of him?"

The Yankee, who had now recovered his self-possession, met the question without the slightest show of hesitation:

"I expect you mean, young man," he said, with insufferable insolence, "a help as I had from Hartley's farm, to assist gittin' down the things. He took home along shore when I went back to the hut for the small bores."

"Oh ho, sir! the rifles ate not then concealed near the Sandusky swamp, I find."

For once, the wily settler felt his cunning had over-reached itself. In the first fury of his subdued rage, he muttered something amounting to a desire that he could produce them at that moment, as he would well know where to lodge the bullets--but, recovering himself, he said aloud:

"The rale fact is, I've a long gun hid, as I said, near the swamp, but my small bore I always carry with me--only think, jist as I and Hartley's help left the hut, I pit my rifle against the outside wall, not being able to carry it down with the other things, and when I went back a minute or two ater, drot me if some tarnation rascal hadn't stole it."

"And if you had the British rascal on t'other shore, you wouldn't be long in tucking a knife into his gizzard, would you?" asked Middlemore, in a nearly verbatim repetition of the horrid oath originally uttered by Desborough, "I see nothing to warrant our interfering with him," he continued in an under tone to his companion.

Not a little surprised to hear his words repeated, the Yankee lost somewhat of his confidence as he replied, "well now sure-LY, you officers didn't think nothin' o' that--I expect I was in a mighty rage to find my small bore gone, and I did curse a little hearty, to be sure."

"The small bore multiplied in your absence," observed Grantham; "when I looked at the hut there were two."

"Then maybe you can tell who was the particular d----d rascal that stole them," said the settler eagerly.

Middlemore laughed heartily at his companion, who observed:

"The particular d----d rascal who removed, not stole them thence, stands before you."

Again the Yankee looked disconcerted. After a moment's hesitation, he continued, with a forced grin, that gave an atrocious expression to his whole countenance:

"Well now, you officers are playing a purty considerable spry trick--it's a good lark, I calculate--but you know, as the saying is, enough's as good as a feast. Do tell me, Mr. Grantham," and his discordant voice became more offensive in its effort at a tone of entreaty, "do tell me where you've hid my small bore--you little think," he concluded, with an emphasis then unnoticed by the officers, but subsequently remembered to have been perfectly ferocious, "what reason I have to vally it."

"We never descend to larks of the kind," coolly observed Grantham; "but as you say you value your rifle, it shall be restored to you on one condition."

"And what may that be?" asked the settler, somewhat startled at the serious manner of the officer.

"That you show us what your canoe is freighted with. Here in the bows I mean."

"Why," rejoined the Yankee quickly, but as if without design, intercepting the officers' nearer approach, "that bag, I calculate, contains my provisions, and these here blankets that you see, peepin' like from under the sail, are what I makes my bed of while out huntin'."

"And are you quite certain there is nothing under those blankets?--nay do not protest--you cannot answer for what may have occurred while your back was turned, on your way to the hut for the rifle."

"By hell," exclaimed the settler, blusteringly, "were any man to tell me, Jeremiah Desborough, there was any thin' beside them blankets in the canoe, I would lick him into a jelly, even though he could whip his own weight in wild cats."

"So is it? Now then, Jeremiah Desborough, although I have never yet tried to whip my own weight in wild cats, I tell you there is something more than those blankets; and what is more, I insist upon seeing what that something is."

The settler stood confounded. His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers at the boldness and determination of this language. Singly, he could hare crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being assailed by the other; nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed. Moreover, although they had kept their cloaks carefully wrapped around their persons, there could be little doubt that both officers were armed, not, as they had originally given him to understand, with fowling pieces, but with (at the present close quarters at least) far more efficient weapons--pistols. He was relieved from his embarrassment by Middlemore exclaiming:

"Nay, do not press the poor devil, Grantham; I dare say the story of his hunting is all a hum, and that the fact is, he is merely going to earn an honest penny in one of his free commercial speculations--a little contraband," pointing with his finger to the bows, "is it not Desborough?"

"Why now, officer," said the Yankee, rapidly assuming a dogged air, as if ashamed of the discovery that had been so acutely made, "I expect you won't hurt a poor fellor for doin' a little in this way. Drot me, these are hard times, and this here war jist beginnin', quite pits one to one's shifts."

"This might do, Desborough, were your present freight an arrival instead of a departure, but we all know that contraband is imported, not exported."

"Mighty cute you are, I guess," replied the settler, warily, with something like the savage grin of the wild cat, to which he had so recently alluded; "but I expect it would be none so strange to have packed up a few dried hog skins to stow away the goods I am goin' for."

"I should like to try the effect of a bullet among the skins," said Grantham, leisurely drawing forth and cocking a pistol, after having whispered something in the ear of his companion.

"Nay, officer," said Desborough, now for the first time manifesting serious alarm--"you sure-LY don't mean to bore a hole through them innocent skins?"

"True," said Middlemore, imitating, "if he fires, the hole will be something more than SKIN deep I reckon--these pistols, to my knowledge, send a bullet through a two inch plank at twenty paces."

As Middlemore thus expressed himself, both he and Grantham saw, or fancied they saw, the blankets slightly agitated.

"Good place for HIDE that," said the former, addressing his pun to the Yankee, on whom however it was totally lost, "show us those said skins, my good fellow, and if we find they are not filled with any thing it would be treason in a professed British subject to export thus clandestinely, we promise that you shall depart without further hindrance."

"Indeed, officer," muttered the settler, sullenly and doggedly, "I shan't do no sich thing. Yon don't belong to the custom-house I reckon, and so I wish you a good day, for I have a considerable long course to run, and must be movin'." Then, seizing the paddles that were lying on the sand, he prepared to shove the canoe from the beach.

"Not at least before I have sent a bullet, to ascertain the true quality of your skins," said Grantham, levelling his pistol.