"Reckon not, Miss Kate," said the old man. "You don't s'pose I was a-goin' to frighten away yer game. I seed you a-stoopin' down aimin' at somethin', and I jist creeped along a little at a time to see what it was. Why, what did come over you, Miss Kate, to let that ole har go? It was the puttiest shot I ever did see."
"Oh! I couldn't fire at the dear little thing while it was eating so prettily," said Kate, letting down the hammer of the gun as easily as she could; "and then he cut up such funny little capers that I came near laughing right out. I couldn't shoot him while he was so happy, and I'm glad I didn't do it at all."
"All right, Miss Kate," said Uncle Braddock, as he started off on his way through the woods; "that may be a werry pious way to go a-huntin' but it won't bring you in much meat."
When Harry came back from hunting for the bee-tree, which he did not find, he saw Kate walking slowly down the path toward the village, the gun under her arm, with the muzzle carefully pointed toward the ground.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A Man in a Boat.
On a very pleasant afternoon that fall, a man came down Crooked Creek in a small flat-bottomed boat. He rowed leisurely, as if he had been rowing a long distance and felt a little tired. In one end of the boat was a small trunk.
As this man, who had red hair, and a red face, and large red hands, pulled slowly along the creek, turning his head every now and then to see where he was going, he gradually approached the bridge that crossed the creek near "One-eyed Lewston's" cabin. Just before he reached the bridge, he noticed what seemed to him a curious shadow running in a thin straight line across the water. Resting on his oars, and looking up to see what there was above him to throw such a shadow, he perceived a telegraph wire stretching over the creek, and losing itself to sight in the woods on each side.