When morning at last arrived, the family again departed, having confined the cat under a tub, to prevent a repetition of her cannibal feast. After a journey of five days in a southwardly direction, and when the widow began to hope she was approaching a settlement, she was cheered with the view of smoke arising from a hunter's camp. He was out in search of game, but there was an abundance of venison hanging over the embers of his camp fire. This proved a seasonable supply, for the poor woman had that morning given the last morsel of her stock of food to her children, while she piously fasted herself. The hunter was as much gratified, on his return to his camp that evening, to find it so well peopled, as he had been in the successful hunt of the day. The hospitality of the camp was profusely urged upon the strangers, and bear-meat, venison, and turkey, and elk marrow-bones, were proffered with the frank and liberal manner of a woodsman. This camp was sixty miles from the nearest settlement; and it was speedily arranged that the hunter should accompany the family back to the house, to inter the dead husband. As the party approached the cabin, the family halted, and the hunter advanced to look into the condition of the interior, before the mourners ventured to take another gaze of horror. Hunters, as well as sailors, have their superstitions, which deduct somewhat from their general fearless bearing. They believe in charms on their rifles, and sometimes employ a person skilled in magical incantations to 'take off the spell.' It is not, therefore, unaccountable, that this woodsman felt greater apprehension in approaching the cabin where a dead body lay, than he would in conflict with an Indian, or in a close hug with an 'old he bear,' provided his butcher-knife was stiff, of approved temper, and sharp at the point. He 'laid out' an old she wolf with his rifle, that was scratching at the door of the desolate habitation, and was on the point of raising the latch, when he heard issuing from within a low moaning sound. Venturing to peep through an opening where the chinking had fallen out, a single glance at the frightful and mutilated corpse satisfied his heated imagination that the sound proceeded from the dead husband. He ran off with wild affright, under a full conviction that the house was haunted. The earnest entreaties of the widow induced him, in company with herself, to approach the cabin once more. They looked in at the same moment, and beheld, as their superstitious imaginations severally painted the scene before them, in the conception of the hunter, a black, cloven-footed beast, sitting on the body of the deceased, while the widow insisted that something like a swan was hovering over the remains of her dead husband. The moaning was renewed; the confinement of the cat was not remembered, and the spectators of the horrors within ran away in despair. The hunter once more ventured near enough to the cabin to throw a torch upon its roof.