"And you, Fluella?" persisted the saucy querist, turning to the blushing girl.
"He has not asked me yet," she quickly replied, with a look in which maiden pride, archness, and unuttered happiness, were charmingly blended. "If he should, and you should command me"—
"Command? command! Now, that is a good one, Fluella," returned the laughing foster-father. "Well, well, a woman will be a woman still, any way you can fix it. All right, however, I presume. But, chief," he added, turning to the natural father, who stood with the hunter a little in the background, "what has been going on here cannot have escaped your keen observation; and you ought to have a voice in this matter. What do you say?"
"The chief," replied the other, with his usual dignity, "the chief has had one staff, one light of his lodge; he will now have two. Wenongonet is content."
"It is settled, then," rejoined the former, whose usually passionless countenance was now beaming with pleasure; "all right, all round. Now, sister Alice, let us all adjourn to your house, where you and Fluella, from some of those splendid lake trout which I and Mr. Phillips, who, as well as the chief, must be of the party, will first go out and catch for you,—you and Fluella, I say, must cook us up a nice family dinner, over which we will discuss matters at large, and have a good time generally."
In a few minutes more the happy group were on their way to the Elwood cottage.
The principal interest of our story is at an end; and with it, also, the story itself should speedily terminate. A few words more, however, seem necessary, to anticipate the inquiries which will very naturally arise in the mind of the reader, respecting what might be expected soon to follow the eclaircissement of the few last pages; and, accordingly, as far as can be done without marring the unity of time, we will proceed, briefly, to answer the inquiries thus arising.
The body of the fated Mark Elwood, perforated through the breast by the bullet of his cold-blooded murderer, having broken from the sinking weights attached to it, and risen to the surface of the lake, was found in about a fortnight, brought home, and buried on his farm.
Not far from the same time the faithful hunter received, from the hands of a gentleman passing through the settlement, a deed of gift of three hundred acres of valuable timber-land, adjoining his own little patch of a lot, all duly drawn, signed, and executed by Arthur Elwood; who, after a pleasant sojourn of a week at the Elwood cottage, apprising its inmates of what he had in store for them, in the line of property, had departed for his home, a happier man than he had been, since, for secret griefs, he had dissolved partnership with his brother Mark, and left the little interior village where the pair first made their humble beginning in life.
Codman, the trapper, continued to trap it still, and, as all the settlers within a circuit of many miles around them were often unmistakably made aware, to crow as usual on all extra occasions.