e river under a log, and the price was sixpence each. We used to pass
the tuck-shop at school for three days on end in order that we might
possess _Leaping Deer, the Shawnee Spy_. We toadied shamefully to the
owner of _Bull's Eye Joe_, who, we understood, had been the sole
protection of a frontier state. Again and again have I tried to find one
of those early friends, and in many places have I inquired, but my humble
companions have disappeared and left no signs, like country children one
played with in holiday times.

It appears, however, that I have not been the only lover of the trapper
stories, nor the only one who has missed his friends, for I received a
letter not long ago from a bookman telling me that he had seen my
complaint somewhere, and sending me the _Frontier Angel_ on loan strictly
that I might have an hour's sinless enjoyment. He also said he was on
the track of _Bill Bidden_, another famous trapper, and hoped to send me
word that Bill was found, whose original value was sixpence, but for whom
this bookman was now prepared to pay gold. One, of course, does not mean
that the Indian and trapper stories had the same claim to be literature
as the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for, be it said with reverence, there was
not much distinction in the style, or art in the narrative, but they were
romances, and their subjects suited boys, who are barbarians, and there
are moments when we are barbarians again, and above all things these
tales bring back the days of long ago. It was later that one fell under
the power of two more mature and exacting charmers, Mayne Reid's _Rifle
Rangers_ and Dumas' _Monte Christo_. The _Rangers_ has vanished with
many another possession of the past, but I still retain in a grateful
memory the scene where Rube, the Indian fighter, who is supposed to have
perished in a prairie fire and is being mourned by the hero, emerges with
much humour from the inside of a buffalo which was lying dead upon the
plain, and rails at the idea that he could be wiped out so easily.
Whether imagination has been at work or not I do not know, but that is
how my memory has it now, and to this day I count that resurrection a
piece of most fetching work.

Rambling through a bookshop a few months ago I lighted on a copy of
_Monte Christo_ and bought it greedily, for there was a railway journey
before me. It is a critical experiment to meet a love of early days
after the years have come and gone. This stout and