"Oh ho, sir! the rifles are not then concealed near the Sandusky swamp, I find?" For once the wily settler felt his cunning had overreached itself. In the first fury of his subdued rage, he muttered something amounting to a desire that he could produce them at that moment, as he would well know where to lodge the bullets--but, recovering himself, he said aloud: "The rale fact is, I've a long gun hid, as I said, near the swamp, but my small bore I always carry with me--only think, jist as I and Hartley's help left the hut, I pit my rifle against the outside wall, not being able to carry it down with the other things, and when I went back a minute or two after, drot me if some tarnation rascal hadn't stole it." "And if you had the British rascal on t'other shore, you wouldn't be long in tucking a knife into his gizzard, would you?" asked Middlemore, in a nearly verbatim repetition of the horrid oath originally uttered by Desborough. "I see nothing to warrant our interfering with him," he continued in an under tone to his companion. Not a little surprised to hear his words repeated, the man lost somewhat of his confidence as he replied, "Well now, sure-_ly_, you officers didn't think nothin' o' that--I expect I was in a mighty rage to find my small bore gone, and I did curse a little heart_y_, to be sure." "The small bore multiplied in your absence," observed Grantham; "when I looked at the hut there were two." "Then may be you can tell me who was the particular d----d rascal that stole them," said the settler eagerly. Middlemore laughed heartily at his companion who observed: "The particular d----d rascal who removed, not stole them thence, stands before you." Again the settler looked disconcerted. After a moment's hesitation he continued, with a forced grin that gave an atrocious expression to his whole countenance: "Well now, you officers are playing a purty considerable spry trick--it's a good lark, I calculate--but you know, as the saying is, enough's as good as a feast. Do tell me, Mr. Grantham," and his discordant voice became more offensive in its effort at a tone of entreaty, "Do tell me where you've hid my small bore; you little think," he concluded, with an emphasis then unnoticed by the officers, but subsequently remembered to have been perfectly ferocious, "what reason I have to vally it." "We never descend to larks of the kind," coolly observed Grantham; "but as you say you value your rifle, it shall be restored to you on one condition." "And what may that be?" asked the settler, somewhat startled at the serious manner of the officer. "That you show us what your canoe is freighted with. Here in the bows, I mean." "Why," rejoined the Yankee quickly, but, as if without design, intercepting the officers' near approach, "that bag, I calculate, contains my provisions, and these here blankets that you see, peepin' like from under the sail, are what I makes my bed of while out huntin'."