As Harry took it in his hand, he grasped the stock in a peculiar manner--very differently from what he would have done at any other time, and, as he did so, he pressed something or other that caused a little lid beneath the trigger-guard to fly open. And while Little Rifle was staring wonderingly at this hitherto unknown contrivance, Harry reached one thumb and finger in, and drew out a small twist of paper. On it, he saw written a few words, in faded ink. _And these words told the secret of Little Rifle’s birth, history and life!_ CHAPTER XVII. WOOING IN THE WILDERNESS. Little Rifle stood pale and breathless, as he saw Harry Northend draw the slip of paper from the secret recess in the stock of his gun. “Shall I read it?” asked Harry in a husky voice. “Yes,” was the whispered answer. And he read: “On the completion of her second birthday, I presented this rifle to my beloved daughter Hagar. Providence has ordained that a portion of her life shall be spent in the wilderness, and it may be of some use to her in the future. Her mother died at her birth and she is my only child. I am compelled to go on a long journey that may separate her from me for years, and I leave her in charge of Maquesa, the Indian chief who is my friend tried and true. JARED RAVENNA.” When Harry had completed the reading of this extraordinary slip he folded it up and carefully replaced it in the small opening, and closed the cunningly contrived lid, and then looked at his companion, who, still pale, and now shivering in every limb, said: “Harry, you have discovered my secret; Hagar Ravenna is my name.” “And you are not a boy, but a girl, and the most beautiful one that I ever laid eyes upon. I did not suspect _that_, and I now understand your bashfulness, and the suspicion with which Old Ruff looked upon me.” “Yes; he had great fears that you suspected my sex, and when we were on the point of starting, did his best to dissuade me against going with you.” “Do you regret that you came?” “No, else I might have lived and died in ignorance of my real name.” “And now that you have heard it pronounced, is there any thing in it, that sounds familiar--that brings up past memories? _Hagar!_ think of it.” Little Rifle looked off in the blinding snow with a dim, vacant, wandering look, as if she were seeking to awaken long-forgotten memories. She stood thus, silent and abstracted, for several minutes, and then spoke in a low, hushed voice: “Yes, there is something in the sound of the word that struck my ear, as though I had heard it before, and it calls up again the picture that I sometimes see in my dreams, of a great ship sailing over the water; but the picture is dim and shadowy, and I do not know whether it is only the outlines of a dream that came to me sometime, away back in childhood, perhaps when I lay asleep in the lodge of the Indian chief, Maquesa.”