“Then, I presume,” said Grantham, with a smile, “you are well provided with silver bullets, Desborough—­for, in the hurry of departure, you seem likely to forget the only medium through which leaden ones can be made available:  not a rifle or a shot-gun do I see.”

The Yankee fixed his eye for a moment, with a penetrating expression, on the youth, as if he would have sought a meaning deeper than the words implied.  His reading seemed to satisfy him that all was right.

“What,” he observed, with a leer, half cunning half insolent, “if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last time I hunted there.”

“In that case,” observed the laughing Middlemore, to whom the opportunity was irresistible, “you are going out on a wild goose chase, indeed.  Your prospects of a good hunt, as you call it, cannot be said to be sure as A gun, for in regard to the latter, you may depend some one has discovered and rifled it before this.”

“You seem to have laid in a store of provisions for this trip, Desborough,” remarked Henry Grantham; “how long do you purpose being absent?”

“I guess three or four days,” was the sullen reply.

“Three or four days! why your bag contains,” and the officer partly raised a corner of the sail, “provisions for a week, or, at least, for two for half that period.”

The manner in which the two was emphasised did not escape the attention of the settler.  He was visibly disconcerted, nor was he at all reassured when the younger officer proceeded: 

“By the bye, Desborough, we saw you leave the hut with a companion—­what has become of him?”

The Yankee, who had now recovered his self-possession, met the question without the slightest show of hesitation: 

“I expect you mean, young man,” he said, with insufferable insolence, “a help as I had from Hartley’s farm, to assist gittin’ down the things.  He took home along shore when I went back to the hut for the small bores.”

“Oh ho, sir! the rifles ate not then concealed near the Sandusky swamp, I find.”

For once, the wily settler felt his cunning had over-reached itself.  In the first fury of his subdued rage, he muttered something amounting to a desire that he could produce them at that moment, as he would well know where to lodge the bullets—­but, recovering himself, he said aloud: 

“The rale fact is, I’ve a long gun hid, as I said, near the swamp, but my small bore I always carry with me—­only think, jist as I and Hartley’s help left the hut, I pit my rifle against the outside wall, not being able to carry it down with the other things, and when I went back a minute or two ater, drot me if some tarnation rascal hadn’t stole it.”

“And if you had the British rascal on t’other shore, you wouldn’t be long in tucking a knife into his gizzard, would you?” asked Middlemore, in a nearly verbatim repetition of the horrid oath originally uttered by Desborough, “I see nothing to warrant our interfering with him,” he continued in an under tone to his companion.