as they
approached. In a shorter space of time than it takes to tell, March was
surrounded, dragged off his horse, passed from one to another, to be
handled roughly, in order to make sure that it was really himself, and,
finally, was swallowed up by Bounce in a masculine embrace that might
almost have passed for the hug of a grisly bear.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

MARCH MARSTON IS PERPLEXED, SO ARE HIS FRIENDS--AN UNLOOKED-FOR
MEETING--TERRIBLE NEWS--THE ATTACK--THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST ONCE AGAIN
RENDERS SIGNAL SERVICE TO THE TRAPPERS--WILD DOINGS IN GENERAL, AND
MARCH MARSTON'S CHAGRIN IN PARTICULAR.

"March Marston," said Bounce--and Bounce was sitting beside the camp
fire, smoking his pipe after supper when he said it--"you may think
ye're a 'cute feller, you may, oncommon 'cute; but if you'll listen to
wot an oldish hunter says, an' take his advice, you'll come to think, in
a feelosophical way, d'ye see? that ye're not quite _so_ 'cute as ye
suppose."

Bounce delivered this oracularly, and followed it up with a succession
of puffs, each of which was so solidly yellow as to suggest to the mind
of Bertram, who chanced to be taking his portrait at that moment, that
the next puff would burst out in pure flame. Gibault and Big Waller
nodded their heads in testimony of their approval of the general scope
of the remark; the latter even went the length of "guessing that it was
a fact," and Redhand smiled. Hawkswing looked, if possible, graver than
usual.

"As," resumed Bounce after a considerable pause, during which March
looked and felt very uncomfortable, "the nat'ral eyes of the old men
becomes more dimmer, d'ye see? their mental eyes, so to speak, becomes
sharper, so as that they can see through no end o' figurative
millstones. That bein' the case when there's no millstone to be seen
through at all, but only a oncommon thin trans--trans--"

"Ollification," suggested Waller modestly.

"Not at all," retorted Bounce with much severity in his tone. "I _wos_
goin' to have said--transparientsy; but I'll not say that now, seein'
it's too feelosophical for the likes o' you; but, as I wos sayin', that
bein' the case, d'ye see? it's quite plain that--"

Here Bounce, having got into depths unusually profound even for his
speculative and philosophical turn of mind, sought refuge in a series of
voluminous puffs, and wound up, finally, with an emphatic assertion that
"there wos somethin' wrong, an' it wos o' no manner