are you, and what are you doing here? Is it a frolic from the fort, or
what is it, that causes all this disturbance?"

"Disturbance!--why we don't make a great deal of noise, no, it's no
frolic; we are come to settle here, and shall be your neighbours."

"To settle here!--why, what on earth do you mean, young woman? Settle
here!--not you, surely."

"Yes, indeed, we are. Don't you know Martin Super, the trapper? He is
with us, and now at work in the woods getting ready for raising the
house, as you call it.--Do you know, Mary," said Emma in a low tone to
her sister, "I'm almost afraid of that man, although I do speak so
boldly."

"Martin Super--yes, I know him," replied the hunter, who without any
more ceremony threw his gun into the hollow of his arm, turned round,
and walked away in the direction of his own hut.

"Well, Mary," observed Emma, after a pause of a few seconds, during
which they watched the receding form of the hunter, "the old gentleman
is not over-polite. Suppose we go back and narrate our first
adventure?"

"Let us walk up to where Alfred and Martin Super are at work, and tell
them," replied Mary.

They soon gained the spot where the men were felling the trees, and made
known to Alfred and Martin what had taken place.

"He is angered, miss," observed Martin; "I guessed as much; well, if he
don't like it he must squat elsewhere."

"How do you mean squat elsewhere?"

"I mean, miss, that if he don't like company so near him, he must shift
and build his wigwam further off."

"But, why should he not like company? I should have imagined that it
would be agreeable rather than otherwise," replied Mary Percival.

"You may think so, miss, but Malachi Bone thinks other, wise; and it's
very natural; a man who has lived all his life in the woods, all alone,
his eye never resting, his ear ever watching; catching at every sound,
even to the breaking of a twig or the falling of a leaf; sleeping with
his finger on his trigger and one eye half open, gets used to no company
but his own, and can't abide it. I recollect the time when I could not.
Why, miss, when a man hasn't spoken a word perhaps for months, talking
is a fatigue, and, when he hasn't heard a word spoken for months,
listening is as bad. It's all custom, miss, and Malachi, as I guessed,
don't like it, and so he's _rily_ and angered. I will go see him after
the work is over."

"But he has his wife, Martin, has he not?"

"Yes; but she'