A fine string of trout caught by Martin and Ray the day before were hanging in this ice-house, and securing what was needed, Old Cy closed the door and turned away. As usual with him, he glanced up and down the narrow beach to see if a deer had wandered along there that morning, and in doing so he now saw, close to the water's edge and distinctly outlined in the damp sand, the print of a moccasined foot. It was of extra large size, and as Old Cy bent over it, he saw it had recently been made. Glancing along toward the head of this cove, he saw more tracks, and two rods away, the sharp furrow of a canoe prow in the sand. "It's that pesky half-breed, sure's a gun," he muttered, stooping over the track, "fer a good bit o' his legs was turned up to walk on, and he wore moccasins t'other day." Curious now, and somewhat startled, he looked along where the narrow beach curved out and around to the landing, and saw the tracks led that way. Then picking his way so as not to obscure them, he followed until not three rods from the new cabin they left the beach and were plainly visible behind a couple of spruces, in the soft carpet of needles, which was crushed for a small space, where some one had stood. Returning to camp, Old Cy motioned to Levi and Martin. All three returned to the ice-house, looked where the canoe had cut its furrow, took up the trail to its ending beside the two trees, and then glanced into one another's eyes with serious, sobered, troubled faces. And well they might; for the evening previous they had all been grouped upon the piazza of this new cabin until late, while scarce three rods away a spying enemy, presumably this half-breed, had stood and watched them. CHAPTER VII "Blessed be them that 'spects nothin', they won't git fooled."--Old Cy Walker. Christmas Cove was never disturbed by aught except small boats, and few of them. It was a long, crescent-shaped arm of the sea, parallel to the ocean, and separated from it by a spruce-clad cliff; its placid surface scarcely more than rippled or undulated outside, and so shallow was it that each ebb tide left its sandy bottom bare. A stream found devious way along this crescent when the outflow left it bare. Mottled minnows, schools of white and green smelts, crabs of all sorts and sizes, swam and sported up and down this broad, shallow brook while the tide was away, and few of human kind ever watched them. Alongside this cove and inward a dozen or more brown houses and a few white ones faced its curving shore, a broad street with many elms and ruts between which the grass grew separated the houses and cove, and a small white church with a gilt fish for weather-vane on its steeple stood midway of these dwellings.