“Ain’t Injin—­white man!”

“A white man, does ye say, that run off wid Miss Cora?”

Two of the Indians replied in the affirmative.

Teddy manifested the most unbounded amazement, and for a while, could say nothing.  Then he leaped into the air, struck the sides of his shoes with his fingers, and broke forth: 

“It was that owld hunter, may purgatory take him!  Him and that owld Mahogany, what made me drunk—­blast his sowl—­have been hid around in the woods, waiting for a chance to do harm, and one is so much worse than t’other yees can’t tell both from which.  Och! if I but had him under the sight of me gun.”

The spot upon which the Indians and Teddy were standing was but a short distance from the village, and yet, instead of returning to it, they started a small fire and lay down for the night. They were upon the trail, and nothing was to turn them aside from it until their work was completed, or it was utterly lost to them.

Teddy was more loth than they to turn his face backward, but, under the circumstances, he could not forget the sad, waiting husband at home.  So he returned to the cabin, to make him acquainted with the result of their labors thus far.

“If the Indian only avoids the river, he may be overtaken, but if he takes to that, I am fearful he can never be found.”

“Be me sowl, Mr. Harvey, but thim savages says he’s not an Injin, but a white man, and yees know they cannot be mistook fur they’ve got eyes like hawks, and sinses sharper than me only needle, which, begorrah, hasn’t got a point.”

“Can it be that Bra—­that that hunter has done me this great wrong?” said the missionary, correcting himself so dextrously that his servant failed to observe it.  “Has such been the revenge that he has been harboring up for so many years?  And he has followed us these hundreds of miles for the purpose of striking the blow!”

“The owld haythen assassinator!  The bloodthirsty beast, the sneakin’ dog, the dirthy jail-bird, the—­”

“He has not shot either of us when we were at his mercy, for the purpose of lulling us into security, the better to obtain his revenge, and oh, he has succeeded how well!”

The strong man, who still sat in the front of his cabin, where he might catch the first sound of returning footsteps, now covered his face, and his whole form heaved with emotion.  Teddy began to feel uncomfortable.  He arose, walked to and fro, and wiped the tears from his own cheeks.  Despite his tears, however, he recognized in the exclamations of his master a reference to some mystery which he had long suspected, but which had never been cleared up.  The missionary must have met this strange hunter before this encounter in the wilderness, and his identity, and the cause of his deadly enmity, must, also, be known.  Teddy had a great curiosity; but, as his master had repulsed his inquiries upon a previous occasion, he forbore to make any reference to it.  He walked backward and forward until the good man’s emotion had subsided somewhat, and then he said: