Methinks I see him now, with that air of consequence and mystery hanging about him, like the fog from his own shaggy hide after a winter wetting; with those short ears perpetually cocked, as if he felt that his destiny was cast in an age and a land where to hunt, kill, and utterly root out bears, panthers, wolves, and Indians from the top of the earth was the sole end and aim of existence. I see him with that great brush of a tail curled tightly--nay, inflexibly--over his right leg, as if his was a will and a spirit not to be subdued or shaken by any power less than that irresistible and inexorable fate which has declared, and without repeal, that "every dog shall have his day." All this methinks I see, and as vividly too as if I had the living Grumbo before my bodily eyes; for, in the course of his long and eventful career, it grew to be as characteristic of our canine hero as, twenty years later, became a little cocked hat, a gray great-coat, military boots, and a certain attitude, of that famous Corsican, Napoleon the First--commonly, vulgarly, bogusly called the Great. Chapter VI. HOW BIG BLACK BURL FIGURED ON THE WAR-PATH BY DAY. Having followed Big Black Burl to the spot where he had last seen his little master, the white hunters made a narrow inspection of the Indian traces on the ground, which had evidently been left by feet in too great haste for much attempt at concealment or disguise. The black hunter then set his dog on the trail, who, with that grim fixedness of purpose betokened by a certain iron twist of the tail, now took the lead, and the chase for life and death began. Thus surely led, they followed the trail with rapid ease for about two miles, when it was lost in another trail, larger and quite as fresh, made, it would seem from the number of foot-prints, by at least twenty Indians. This they followed likewise, till at the distance of five or six miles farther on in the forest it brought them to the banks of a small, shallow river, just where it was formed by two tributaries, or "forks" as we Western people call such streams before they unite and pursue their course together. Here the trail suddenly disappeared; nor was there any sign of its reaeppearance on the opposite bank, nor, so far as could be seen from that point, on the banks of either fork.