"Let him alone for that," returned he whom our readers have doubtless recognised for Henry Grantham. "I will match his punning against your cunning any day." "The truth is, he is _fishing_ to discover our motive for being here, and to find out if we are in any way connected with the disappearance of his rifles." During this conversation _apart_, the Yankee had carelessly approached his canoe, and was affecting to make some alteration in the disposition of the sail. The officers, the younger especially, keeping a sharp look-out upon his movements, followed at some little distance, until they, at length, stood on the extreme verge of the sands. Their near approach seemed to render Desborough impatient. "I expect, officers," he said, with a hastiness that, at any other moment, would have called down immediate reproof, if not chastisement, "you will only be losin' time here for nothin'; about a mile beyond Hartley's there'll be plenty of pattridges at this hour, and I am jist goin to start myself for a little shootin' in the Sandusky river." "Than I presume," said Grantham, with a smile, "you are well provided with silver bullets, Desborough; for, in the hurry of departure, you seem likely to forget the only medium through which leaden ones can be made available--not a rifle or a shot-gun do I see." The man fixed his eyes for a moment, with a penetrating expression, on the youth, as if he would have sought a meaning deeper than the words implied. His reading seemed to satisfy him that all was right. "What," he observed, with a leer, half cunning, half insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last time I hunted there?" "In that case," observed the laughing Middlemore, to whom the opportunity was irresistible, "you are going out on a _wild goose chase_ indeed. Your prospects for a good hunt, as you call it, cannot be said to _be sure as a gun_; for in regard to the latter, you may depend some one has discovered and _rifled_ it before this." "You seem to have laid in a store of provisions for this trip, Desborough," remarked Henry Grantham; "how long do you purpose being absent?" "I guess three or four days," was the sullen reply. "Three or four days! why your bag contains"--and the officer partly raised a corner of the sail, "provisions for a week, or, at least, for _two_ for half that period." The manner in which the _two_ was emphasised did not escape the attention of the settler. He was visibly disconcerted, nor was he at all reassured when the younger officer proceeded: "By the bye, Desborough, we saw you leave the hut with a companion--what has become of him?" The settler, who had now recovered his self-possession, met the question without the slightest show of hesitation: "I expect you mean, young man," he said, with insufferable insolence, "a help as I had from Hartley's farm, to assist gittin' down the things. He took home along shore when I went back to the hut for the small bores."