ble belief that the
Wild Man of the West would, as he had already done more than once,
vanish from the spot before he could get him transferred to the pages of
his immortal book.

Trappers are undoubtedly men who can act with vigorous promptitude in
their own peculiar sphere; but when out of that sphere, they are rather
clumsy and awkward. Had they been in the forest, each man would have
fetched a draught of clear water from the nearest spring with the utmost
celerity; but, being in a settlement, they knew not where to turn. Big
Waller dashed towards a very small pond which lay near the cottage, and
dipping his cap into it, brought up a compound of diluted mud and
chickweed. Gibault made an attempt on a tiny rivulet with the like
success, which was not surprising, seeing that its fountain-head lay at
the bottom of the said pond. Bounce and Hawkswing bolted into the
cottage in search of the needful fluid; but, being unused to furniture,
they upset three chairs and a small table in their haste, and scattered
on the floor a mass of crockery, with a crash that made them feel as if
they had been the means of causing some dire domestic calamity, and
which almost terrified the household kitten into fits.

Then Bounce made a hopeful grasp at a teapot, which, having happily been
placed on a side table, had survived the wreck of its contemporary cups
and saucers, and the Indian made an insane effort to wrench the top off
a butter-churn, in the belief that it contained a well-spring of water.

Of all the party old Redhand alone stood still, with his bald head
glistening in the last rays of the sinking sun, and his kindly face
wrinkled all over with a sympathetic smile. He knew well that the young
widow would soon recover, with or without the aid of water; so he smoked
his pipe complacently, leaned against the doorpost, and looked on.

He was right. In a few minutes Mrs Marston recovered, and was tenderly
led into the cottage by her old lover, Louis Thadwick, or, as we still
prefer to call him, the Wild Man of the West. There, seated by her
side, in the midst of the wreck and debris of her household goods, the
Wild Man, quite regardless of appearances, began boldly to tell the same
old tale, and commit the same offence, that he told and committed
upwards of sixteen years before, when _he_ was Louis the Trapper and
_she_ was Mary West.

Seeing what was going forward, the judicious trappers and the
enthusiastic artist con