y this are the
first time you've got as fur north, I'll say I think you're nearer the
trail than yer ever war yit."

"What might be the reason for that?" eagerly asked Teddy.

"I can't say what it is, only I kind o' feel it in my bones. Thar's a
tribe of copperskins about a hundred miles to the north'ard, that I'll
lay can tell yer _somethin'_ about the gal."

"Indians? An' be what token would they be acquaint with her?"

"They're up near the Hudson Bay Territory line, and be a harmless kind
of people. I stayed among 'em two winters and found 'em a harmless lot
o' simpletons that wouldn't hurt a hair o' yer head. Thar's allers a
lot of white people staying among 'em."

"I fails yit to see what they could be doing with Miss Cora."

"Mind I tells yer only what I _thinks_--not what I _knows_. It's my
private opine, then, that that hunter has took the gal up among them
Injins, and they're both living thar. If that be so, you needn't be
afeard to go right among 'em, for the only thing yer'll have to look
out fur will be the same old hunter himself."

This remark made a deep impression upon Teddy. He sat smoking his
pipe, and gazing into the glowing embers, as if he could there trace
out the devious, and thus far invisible, trail that had baffled him so
long. It must be confessed that the search of the Hibernian thus far
had been carried on in a manner that could hardly be expected to
insure success. He had spent weeks in wandering through the woods,
sleeping upon the ground or in the branches of some tree, fishing for
awhile in some stream, or hunting for game--impelled onward all the
time by his unconquerable resolve to find Cora Richter and return her
to her husband. On the night that the five Sioux returned to the
village, and announced their abandonment of the pursuit, Teddy told
the missionary that he should never see him again, until he had gained
some tidings of his beloved mistress, or had become assured that there
could be no hope of her recovery. How long this peculiar means of
hunting would have gone on, it is impossible to tell, but most
probably until Teddy himself had perished, for there was not the
shadow of a chance of his gaining any information of the lost one. His
meeting with the trapper was purely accidental, and the hint thrown
out by the latter was the reason of setting the fellow to work in the
proper way.

The conversation was carried on for an hour or so longer, during which
the trapper ga