id_ come over you, Miss Kate, to let that ole har go?
It was the puttiest shot I ever did see."

"Oh! I couldn't fire at the dear little thing while it was eating so
prettily," said Kate, letting down the hammer of the gun as easily as
she could; "and then he cut up such funny little capers that I came near
laughing right out. I couldn't shoot him while he was so happy, and I'm
glad I didn't do it at all."

"All right, Miss Kate," said Uncle Braddock, as he started off on his
way through the woods; "that may be a werry pious way to go a-huntin'
but it won't bring you in much meat."

When Harry came back from hunting for the bee-tree, which he did not
find, he saw Kate walking slowly down the path toward the village, the
gun under her arm, with the muzzle carefully pointed toward the ground.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A MAN IN A BOAT.

On a very pleasant afternoon that fall, a man came down Crooked Creek in
a small flat-bottomed boat. He rowed leisurely, as if he had been rowing
a long distance and felt a little tired. In one end of the boat was a
small trunk.

As this man, who had red hair, and a red face, and large red hands,
pulled slowly along the creek, turning his head every now and then to
see where he was going, he gradually approached the bridge that crossed
the creek near "One-eyed Lewston's" cabin. Just before he reached the
bridge, he noticed what seemed to him a curious shadow running in a thin
straight line across the water. Resting on his oars, and looking up to
see what there was above him to throw such a shadow, he perceived a
telegraph wire stretching over the creek, and losing itself to sight in
the woods on each side.

A telegraph wire was an ordinary sight to this man, but this particular
wire seemed to astonish him greatly.

"What on earth is this?" he asked out loud. But there was no one to
answer him, and so, after puzzling his mind for a few minutes, he rowed
on.

When that man reached the point in the creek to which he was bound, and,
with his trunk on his shoulder, walked up to the house where he used to
live, he was still more astonished; for a telegraph wire ran through one
corner of the back yard.

Cousin Maria now lived in this house, and George Mason was coming to pay
her a visit. His appearance was rather a surprise to her, but still she
welcomed him. She was a good soul.

Almost before he asked her how she was, he put the question to her:

"What telegraph line's that?"

S