"Well, Chub,"--said the other, quite paternally--"I assure you I don't love Miss Munro--and--" "What! you don't love Miss Lucy. Why, everybody ought to love her. Now, if you don't love her, I'll hammer you, strannger, off hand." The poor pedler professed a proper sort of love for the young lady--not exactly such as would seek her for a wife, however, and succeeded in satisfying, after a while, the scruples of one who, in addition to deformity, he also discovered to labor under the more serious curse of partial idiocy. Having done this, and flattered, in sundry other ways, the peculiarities of his companion, he pursued his other point with laudable pertinacity. He at length got from Chub his own history: how he had run into the woods with his mother, who had suffered from the ill-treatment of her husband: how, with his own industry, he had sustained her wants, and supplied her with all the comforts which a long period had required; and how, dying at length, she had left him--the forest boy--alone, to pursue those toils which heretofore had an object, while she yielded him in return for them society and sympathy. These particulars, got from him in a manner the most desultory, were made to preface the more important parts of the narrative. It appears that his harmlessness had kept him undisturbed, even by the wild marauders of that region, and that he still continued to procure a narrow livelihood by his woodland labors, and sought no association with that humanity which, though among fellow-creatures, would still have lacked of fellowship for him. In the transfer of Lucy from the village to the shelter of the outlaws, he had obtained a glimpse of her person and form, and had ever since been prying in the neighborhood for a second and similar enjoyment. He now made known to the pedler her place of concealment, which he had, some time before this event, himself discovered; but which, through dread of Rivers, for whom he seemed to entertain an habitual fear, he had never ventured to penetrate. "Well, I must see her," exclaimed Bunce. "I a'n't afraid, 'cause you see, Mr. Williams--Chub, I mean, it's only justice, and to save the poor young gentleman's life. I'm sure I oughtn't to be afraid, and no more I a'n't. Won't you go there with me, Chub?" "Can't think of it, strannger. Guy is a dark man, and mother said I must keep away when he rode in the woods. Guy don't talk--he shoots."