by any man, or men, who were
"troublesome," by which expression he understood Bellew to mean that
they were resolute and physically powerful in opposition; he therefore
thought it best to avoid any further tendency to boast by holding his
tongue.

Not so his volatile retainer, who stuck his fork into a lump of meat
vindictively, as if it had been the body of a McLeod, and exclaimed:--

"Hah! vat you say? troblesom, eh? who care for dat? If de Macklodds do
touche, by von small hinch, de lands of de Companie--ve vill--hah!"

Another stab of the fork was all that the savage Le Rue vouchsafed as an
explanation of his intentions.

In this frame of mind Reginald Redding and his man started off next
morning on foot at an early hour, slept that night at a place called
Sam's hut, and, the following evening, drew near to the end of their
journey.

CHAPTER THREE.

A BRIEF BUT AGREEABLE MEETING.

The little outskirt settlement of Partridge Bay was one of those infant
colonies which was destined to become in future years a flourishing and
thickly-peopled district of Canada. At the period of our story it was a
mere cluster of dwellings that were little better than shanties in point
of architecture and appearance. They were, however, somewhat larger
than these, and the cleared fields around them, with here and there a
little garden railed in, gave them a more homelike aspect than the
dwellings of the wood-men.

The valley in which the settlement stood was one of those magnificent
stretches of primeval forest which used to be the hunting-grounds of the
red man, and from which he had not at that time been thrust by the
"paleface," for, here and there, his wigwam might still be seen sending
its wreath of blue smoke above the tree-tops.

It was evening--a calm, sunny, glorious, spring evening--when Redding
and his man overtopped the heights that enclosed the vale, and paused as
well to gaze upon the scene as to recover breath. Far below them lay
the hamlet, a cluster of black dots on a field of pure snow. Roseate
lights on undulations, and cold blue shadows in hollows, were tamed down
in effect by the windows of the hamlet which shot forth beams of blazing
fire at the setting sun. Illimitable space seemed to stretch away to
the place where the horizon would have been if it had not lost itself in
a golden glory, and this vast reach was a varied irregular network of
dark pines and fields of snow--the pines tipped everyw