The little party, ranged on rude seats about the fireplace, so great as to be out of all proportion to the room, chatted of things near and afar, while they grew hungry with every sniff of appetizing cookery. Nathan was all agog at the peltry that hung from innumerable pegs on the rough log walls. There were skins of many animals that had long been rare, if not extinct, in the old colony where he was born. There were the broad, round shields of beaver skins, the slenderer and lighter-hued skins of otters, besides the similarly shaped but smaller and darker-colored fisher, with a bundle of the lesser martins, that Job called “saple,” and no end of muskrats and minks. There were, also, half a dozen wolf skins, and, conspicuous in size and glossy blackness, were three bear skins, and beside them hung a tawny panther hide, the huge hinder paws and long tail trailing on the puncheon floor, while the cat-like head seemed to prowl, as stealthily as in life, among the upper shadows and flickerings of the firelight. Quickly noting the boy’s interest in these trophies, Job made the round of them all, explaining the habits of each animal, the method of its capture, and giving brief narrations of encounters with the larger ones. He exhibited, with the most pride, a beautiful silver-gray foxskin, and an odd-looking spotted and coarse-haired skin, stuffed with moss into some semblance of its form in the flesh. This he brought to the fireside, and set on its fin-like hinder feet, for the inspection of his guests. “What on airth is it?” Seth Beeman asked. “’Tain’t of the airth, but of the water,” Job answered, with a chuckle. “I killed it on the ice of the lake airly in the winter. One of the sojers at the Fort see it, an’ he says it’s a seal fish belongin’ to the sea, where he’s seen no end on ’em. But them sojers to the Fort is an ign’ant set like all the reg’lars, that we rangers always despised as bad as they did us, an’ it don’t look no ways reasonable that sech a creatur’ could come all the way up the St. Lawrence, an’ the Iriquois River, an’ most the len’th o’ this lake. My idee is, it’s a fresh-water maremaid, an’ nat’ral to this lake.” If Seth had any doubt of this theory, he gave it no expression, and the hunter went on: “An ol’ Injin told me that there’s always ben one o’ these cretur’s seen in this lake a spell afore every war that’s ever ben. But I hope the sign’ll fail this time. I’ve seen enough o’ war an’ I don’t see no chance of another, all Canady bein’ took an’ the Injins in these parts bein’ quilled.”