About this time, which was in the neighborhood of midnight, Teddy made the discovery that he was lost, and, like a sensible person, gave up all efforts to right himself.  He was so wearied that he did not awake until daylight, when he was aroused by the five Indians, whose trail-hunt led them to the spot where he lay sleeping.

The trail was now followed rapidly for a half-mile when, as the pursuers had feared all along, it made a sudden bend to the river, upon the banks of which it was totally lost.  Not to be baffled in this manner, a canoe was produced with which three crossed the river.  The entire day was spent by these upon one bank, while the two other Indians and Teddy pursued the search for traces of the hunter’s landing upon their own side of the stream.  Not the slightest evidence was discovered that he had touched shore after embarking.  The man had escaped, and even the eagle-eyed Sioux were compelled on the second night to return to their village with the sad announcement that the TRAIL WAS LOST!

[Illustration:  THE TRAIL WAS LOST.]

CHAPTER VII.

A HIBERNIAN’S SEARCH FOR THE TRAIL.

  “Oh I let me only breathe the air,
  The blessed air that’s breathed by thee;
  And, whether on its wings it bear
  Healing or death, ’tis sweet to me.”

At the close of a windy, blustering day in 1821, two men were seated by a camp-fire in the depths of the wilderness of the northwest.  The wind howled through the branches with a moaning sound such as often heralds the approach of bitter cold weather; and a few feathery flakes of snow that sailed along on the wind, proved that the season of storms was close at hand.

The fire was built down deep in a sort of gorge, where its cheery, crackling blaze could not be seen by any one until he was nearly upon it.  The men sat with their pipes in their mouths, their rifles beside them and their feet toward the fire.  From appearances they were on the best of terms.  One of them needs no introduction, as he is our old friend Teddy, who evidently feels at home in his new situation.  The other is a man of much the same build although somewhat older.  His face, where it is not concealed by a heavy, grizzly beard, is covered by numerous scars, and the border of one eye is disfigured from the same cause.  His dress and accouterments betray the hunter and trapper.

“And so, Teddy, ye’re sayin’ it war a white man that took away the missionary’s wife, and hain’t been heard on since.  Let me see, you said it war nigh onto three months ago, warn’t it?”

[Illustration:  “And so, Teddy, ye’re sayin’ it war a white man that took away the missionary’s wife.”]

“Three months, come day after to-morrow.  Begorrah, but it’s not I that’ll forgit that same date to my dying day, if, indade, I forgit it at all, at all, even whin somebody else will be wearin’ me clothes.”