“Hilloa!  Bill, I say Bill my boy,” he shouted from the chamber next to that in which his son slept.  “Hilloa!  Bill, come here directly.”

Bill answered not, but sounds were heard in his room as of one stepping out of bed, and presently the noise of flint and steel announced that a light was being struck.  In a few minutes, the rather jaded-looking youth appeared at the bedside of his parent.

“Bill, my dear boy,” said Sampson, in a more subdued voice, “did you see any body pass last night after I came home?  Try and recollect yourself; did you see two men on the road?”

“I did, father; just as I had locked the stable door, and was coming in for the night, I saw two men passing down the road.  But why do you ask!”

“Did you speak to them—­could you recognize them,” asked Sampson, without stating his motive for the question.

“I wished them good night, and one of them gruffly bade me good night too; but I could not make out who they were, though one did for a moment strike me to be Desborough, and both were tallish sort of men.”

“You’re a lad of penetration, Bill; now saddle me Silvertail as fast as you can.”

“Saddle Silvertail! surely father, you are not going out yet:  it’s not day-light.”

“Saddle me Silvertail, Bill,” repeated the old man with the air of one whose mandate was not to be questioned.  “But where the devil are you going, sir,” he added impatiently.

“Why to saddle Silvertail, to be sure,” said the youth, who was just closing the door for that purpose.

“What, and leave me a miserable old man to get up without a light.  Oh fie, Bill.  I thought you loved your poor old father better than to neglect him so—­there, that will do:  now send in Lucy to dress me.”

The light was kindled, Bill went in and spoke to his wife, then descended to the stable.  A gentle tap at the door of the old interpreter, and Lucy entered in her pretty night dress, and, half asleep, half awake, but without a shadow of discontent in her look, proceeded to assist him in drawing on his stockings, &c.  Sampson’s toilet was soon completed, and Silvertail being announced as “all ready,” he, without communicating a word of his purpose, issued forth from his home, just as the day was beginning to dawn.

Although the reflective powers of Gattrie had been in some measure restored by sleep, it is by no means to be assumed he was yet thoroughly sober.  Uncertain in regard to the movements of those who had so strongly excited his loyal hostility, (and, mayhap, at the moment his curiosity,) it occurred to him that if Desborough had not already baffled his pursuit, a knowledge of the movements and intentions of that individual, might be better obtained from an observation of what was passing on the beach in front of his hut.  The object of this reconnoissance was, therefore, only to see if the canoe of the settler was still on the shore, and with this object he suffered Silvertail