a suit of superfine broadcloth, hat and boots to match, gold watch, showy seals, and all the gewgaw _etceteras_ that go to make up the animal they call a city dandy. He had sold his moose, it appeared, for four hundred dollars, and brought nearly the whole of it home on his bedizened person,--with the object, as he soon admitted, of dazzling the hitherto obdurate Fluella. “Yes,--catch her sartain, now,” he said, with a complaisant glance over his dashing rig, on departing for the chief’s, as soon as he ascertained the fair object of his pursuit had returned to her father’s. But he soon came back, in a great miff, and offered to sell the whole of his fine new outfit for just one half what it cost him. Contrary to expectation, he declared he would have nothing more to do with Gaut Gurley; concerning whom he had seen something, about the time of the trial, to awaken his suspicions, and against whom he now evidently stood ready to array himself, with the rest, on the next occasion. With these few incidents, April passed away, and the first day of May, the usual limit of the fur season, had arrived; but with it the absent trappers had failed to make their appearance. Another week passed, and still they came not. “What could it mean?” was on every tongue. Men ominously shook their heads, and women and children began, in the connection, to talk in suppressed voices of the dark character of Gaut Gurley. At this juncture, word came that Gaut had returned, and had several times been seen about his home. A man was immediately dispatched to Gaut’s residence, for inquiries about the Elwoods; but the messenger returned and reported that Gaut said he parted with them on the Maguntic,--he to go over the mountains to his home, on the Magalloway, and they, in their canoe, that had been frozen up in Oquossak, the fall before, to go to Bethel to sell their furs. Further than this, he knew nothing about them. “I don’t believe a word of it!” exclaimed the hunter, who with many others had anxiously awaited, at the tavern, the messenger’s return; “not one word of it! They would not have gone off to Bethel after such an absence, before returning home; or, if they had, they would have been here before this time. But the story shall be investigated without twelve hours delay. It is time we were moving in the business. Who will furnish me with a good saddle-horse?” The horse was furnished; and within half an hour the excited hunter was speeding his way to Bethel. He returned early the next morning, in a state of still greater excitement and concern than before; having ridden all night, in his anxiety to reach the settlement by the time people were up, so that immediate measures might be put afoot to scour the country in search of the missing Elwoods, whose continued absence had now become doubly mysterious and alarming, by the discovery he had made, as he feared he should, that they had not gone to Bethel at all, nor been seen or heard of anywhere in that direction.