There was a violent splash in the water, a scramble up the bank, a bound or two toward the woods, a pitiful bleat, and then all was still.

“We’ve got ’im,” said Jim.  “He’s took jest one buckshot through his heart.  Ye didn’t touch his head nor his legs.  He jest run till the blood leaked out and he gi’n it up.  Now, boys, you set here, and sing hallelujer till we bring ’im in.”

The nose of the little craft was run against the bank, and Mr. Balfour, seizing the torch, sprang on shore, and Jim followed him into the woods.  They soon found track of the game by the blood that dabbled the bushes, and stumbled upon the beautiful creature stone dead—­fallen prone, with his legs doubled under him.  Jim swung him across his shoulders, and, tottering behind Mr. Balfour, bore him back to the boat.  Placing him in the bottom, the two men resumed their seats, and Jim, after carefully working himself out of the inlet into the river, settled down to a long, swift stroke that bore them back to the camp just as the moon began to show herself above the trees.

It was a night long to be remembered by the boys, a fitting inauguration of the lawyer’s vacation, and an introduction to woodcraft from which, in after years, the neophytes won rare stores of refreshment and health.

Mr. Benedict received them with hearty congratulations, and the perfect sleep of the night only sharpened their desire for further depredations upon the game that lived around them, in the water and on the land.

As the days passed on, they caught trout until they were tired of the sport; they floated for deer at night; they took weary tramps in all directions, and at evening, around the camp-fires, rehearsed their experiences.

During all this period, Mr. Balfour was watching Harry Benedict.  The contrast between the lad and his own son was as marked as that between the lad’s father and himself, but the positions were reversed.  Harry led, contrived, executed.  He was positive, facile, amiable, and the boys were as happy together as their parents were.  Jim had noticed the remarkable interest that Mr. Balfour took in the boy, and had begun to suspect that he entertained intentions which would deprive the camp of one of its chief sources of pleasure.

One day when the lawyer and his guide were quietly eating their lunch in the forest, Mr. Balfour went to work, in his quiet, lawyer-like way, to ascertain the details of Benedict’s history; and he heard them all.  When he heard who had benefited by his guide’s inventions, and learned just how matters stood with regard to the Belcher rifle, he became, for the first time since he had been in the woods, thoroughly excited.  He had a law-case before him as full of the elements of romance as any that he had ever been engaged in.  A defrauded inventor, living in the forest in poverty, having escaped from the insane ward of an alms-house, and the real owner of patent rights that were a mine of wealth to the man who believed that death had blotted out all the evidences of his villainy—­this was quite enough to excite his professional interest, even had he been unacquainted with the man defrauded.  But the position of this uncomplaining, dependent man, who could not fight his own battles, made an irresistible appeal to his sense of justice and his manhood.