e of life with quarrels."

"But not so long as to forget the tricks of his youth," said Ishmael,
rearing his huge frame from beneath the slight covering of a low bush,
and meeting the trapper, face to face; "old man, you have brought this
tribe of red devils upon us, and to-morrow you will be sharing the
booty."

"What have you lost?" calmly demanded the trapper.

"Eight as good mares as ever travelled in gears, besides a foal that is
worth thirty of the brightest Mexicans that bear the face of the King of
Spain. Then the woman has not a cloven hoof for her dairy, or her loom,
and I believe even the grunters, foot sore as they be, are ploughing the
prairie. And now, stranger," he added, dropping the butt of his rifle on
the hard earth, with a violence and clatter that would have intimidated
one less firm than the man he addressed, "how many of these creatures
may fall to your lot?"

"Horses have I never craved, nor even used; though few have journeyed
over more of the wide lands of America than myself, old and feeble as I
seem. But little use is there for a horse among the hills and woods of
York--that is, as York was, but as I greatly fear York is no longer--as
for woollen covering and cow's milk, I covet no such womanly fashions!
The beasts of the field give me food and raiment. No, I crave no cloth
better than the skin of a deer, nor any meat richer than his flesh."

The sincere manner of the trapper, as he uttered this simple
vindication, was not entirely thrown away on the emigrant, whose dull
nature was gradually quickening into a flame, that might speedily have
burst forth with dangerous violence. He listened like one who
doubted, not entirely convinced: and he muttered between his teeth the
denunciation, with which a moment before he intended to precede the
summary vengeance he had certainly meditated.

"This is brave talking," he at length grumbled; "but to my judgment,
too lawyer-like, for a straight forward, fair-weather, and foul-weather
hunter."

"I claim to be no better than a trapper," the other meekly answered.

"Hunter or trapper--there is little difference. I have come, old man,
into these districts because I found the law sitting too tight upon me,
and am not over fond of neighbours who can't settle a dispute without
troubling a justice and twelve men; but I didn't come to be robb'd of my
plunder, and then to say thank'ee to the man who did it!"

"He, who ventures far into the prairies, must