It appeared that, when the sheriff with his attendants reached the village the evening before, and announced the exciting tidings that the desperate man, whom all were so intent on hunting down, had been driven to a stronghold among the rocks of the mountain up the lake, where it might require a large force to take him, men started off in all directions, and rode all night with the news; which, flying like wind over this and the adjoining settlements, threw the whole country, for thirty or forty miles around, into commotion, and put scores of bold men immediately on the march for the scene of action. And the upshot was that, by sunrise the next morning, more than fifty men, hurrying in from all quarters, had assembled at the village, and having appropriated all the boats on the rivers, for many miles above and below, had joined the company of the sheriff, and under his lead were now on their way to the great point of attraction; together with many others entering the lake from other quarters. In a short time the long retinue of canoes came clustering to the shore; when the motley company, preceded by the sheriff and his immediate attendants, all landed, and, crowding around the hunter and his associates, listened, with many a half-suppressed exclamation, indicative of the deep excitement that agitated the mass, to the recital of the discoveries and incidents of the morning. "I cannot believe," said the sheriff who had been listening with keen interest to the hunter's account of his bold but fruitless attempt to compel the submission of the desperado, "I cannot believe, after all, that the fellow will be so foolhardy as to persist in his refusal to surrender, when he knows there is now no longer any chance for him to escape. I will try him faithfully before resorting to extreme measures." "That may be well enough, perhaps," remarked the hunter, demurely, feeling a little rebuked for his own hastiness in firing on the man, by some of the expressions of the officer; "yes, that will be well enough. But, if you succeed in drawing him out to be taken by means of words alone, I will try the experiment on the very next wolf or painter I drive into his den." "Nevertheless, it shall be tried," returned the officer. And accordingly, having called to his side a small band of well-armed assistants, he proceeded with them up the gorge, till he had gained the shelf which afforded the hunter a covert in the previous assault; when he stepped fearlessly out in full view of the mouth of the cavern, and, with a loud voice, calling the name of Gaut Gurley, "commanded him, in the name and by the authority of the State of New Hampshire, to come out and surrender himself a prisoner, to answer, in court, to the charges set forth in a warrant then ready to be produced."