"Cool robbery! let's after him," said Ande, and suiting his action to the word, he pushed his horse into the stream and swum to the other side, followed by Dick. The trail was struck again on the other side and up the stream they went at as fast a gait as the many stumps and fallen trees would allow. Several times they crossed the stream by swimming their horses. Two miles up stream the creek valley widened and the stream, winding around the base of a hill, formed a loop or peninsula of some fifteen acres or so in extent. Here, in a small, grassy clearing, a rude cabin of unhewn logs greeted their vision. It was a one-storied affair pierced with loopholes, and had a small window in the end facing the stream. The roof of heavy hand-made clapboards, weighted down with poles, was green with age as also were the mossy logs of its walls. The door, a heavy affair of split timber, was ajar and near it on a wooden settle was the figure of the hunter, a man of some seventy years. The hair of his head and beard were snowy white, but his active frame belied his years. He was clad in leathern breeches, heavily fringed along the outer seams, and moccasins of the same tough material. A loose, woollen wamus, the product of the settlements, served in lieu of shirt and coat. His coonskin cap was beside him on the bench and he was busily engaged in plucking the captured birds. The sound of trotting horses aroused him from his work and he cast a keen, scrutinising, blue eye on the approaching invaders of his little domain. "I say, sir, we'd like to know why you appropriated our birds," said Ande. "Aye?" inquired the hunter. Ande repeated the question. "I shot these birds." "Well, we shot some too and you seized them all." "Ye did shoot some?" "Yes, we did; we were on the road at the fording and fired at them." The old man gazed at them earnestly, and evidently believing their tale, said: "I thought that more were killed with my shot than customary, and if ye fired at the same time that I did, that explains my not hearing the report of your guns. Ye are welcome to some of them." "Oh, no," said Ande, somewhat mollified by the hunter's generosity and explanation. "We thought you were robbing us, but it was clearly a mistake." "Will ye sit down; it's nigh dinner time and, if ye can eat with a lone old man, you're most welcome. Ye can pasture your horses in that bit of clearing." The invitation was accepted. The horses were tethered out where they could nibble the grass, and they returned. "Come from afar?" interrogated the old hunter. "From Louisiana," said Ande. "Here hunting?" "No, prospecting." The old hunter straightened up as if shot, and gazed at them as if he would pierce them through with those keen, blue orbs of his. "What for?" suspiciously. "Metal, either silver or gold," explained Ande, whose suspicions were also aroused. "Do ye think ye will find it?" "Yes, somewhere." "Where?" "Along this stream."