bangles once seen in Dandy Steve’s cabin.  A man had gone in upon him suddenly one evening without the formality of knocking.  Such foolish conventionalities were not in vogue on the Saranac; this was before Steve took to guiding.  It was in the first year after he appeared in that region, while he was living like a hermit alone, or supposed to be alone, in a tiny log cabin on an island not much bigger than his cabin.

This man—­old Ben, the oldest guide there—­having been hindered at some of the portages, and finding himself too late to reach his destination that night, seeing the glimmer of light from Steve’s cabin, had rowed to the island, landed, and, with the thoughtless freedom of the country, walked in at the half-open door.

He was fond of telling the story of his reception; and as he told it, it had a suspicious sound, and no mistake.  Steve was sitting in a big arm-chair before his table; over the arm of the chair was flung the red shawl.  On the table lay an open book and the silver bangles in it, as if some one had just thrown them off.  At sound of entering footsteps Steve sprang up, with an angry oath, and hastily closing the book threw it and the bangles into the chair from which he had risen, then crowded the shawl down upon them into as small a compass as possible.

“His eyes blazed like lightnin’, or sharper,” said old Ben, “an’ I declare t’ ye I was skeered.  Fur a minut I thought he was a loonatic, sure’s death.  But in a minut more he was all right, an’ there couldn’t nobody treat a feller handsomer than he did me that night an’ the next mornin’; but I took notice that the fust thing he done was to heave a big blanket kind o’ careless like into the chair, an’ cover the things clean up; an’ then in a little while he says, a-sweepin’ the whole bundle up in his arms, ‘I’ll just clear up this little mess, an’ give ye a comfortable chair to sit in;’ an’ he carried it all—­blanket, book, bracelets, shawl, an’ all—­into the next room, an’ throwed ’em on the floor in a pile in one corner.  There wa’n’t but them two rooms to the cabin, so that wa’n’t any place for her to be hid, if so be ’s there was any woman ‘round; an’ he said he was livin’ alone, an’ had been ever since he come.  An’ it was nigh a year then since he come, so I never know’d what to make on ‘t, an’ I don’t suppose there’s anybody doos know any more ’n I do; but if them wa’n’t women’s gear he had out there that night I hain’t never seen any women’s gear, that’s all!  Whose’omeever they was, I hain’t no idea, nor how they got there; but they was women’s gear.  Dandy’s Steve is he couldn’t ha’ had any use for sech a shawl’s that, let alone sayin’ what he’d wanted o’ bracelets on his arms!”

“That’s so,” was the universal ejaculation of Ben’s audience when he reached this point in his narrative, and there seemed to be little more to be said on either side.  This was all there was of the story.  It must stand in each man’s mind for what it was worth, according to his individual bias of interpretation.  But it had become an old story long before the time at which our later narrative of Dandy Steve’s history began; so old, in fact, that it had not been mentioned for years, until the events now about to be chronicled revived it in the minds of Steve’s associates and fellow-guides.