The lad hesitated, and turned somewhat redder in the cheek than he had been the moment before; but his sister saved him from reply, saying, in a musing tone: "I cannot imagine what delight men feel in what they call the sports of the field. To inflict death may be a necessity, but surely should not be an amusement."
"Man is a born hunter, Miss Prevost," replied the stranger, with a smile. "He must chase something. Oh, my dear young lady! few can tell the enjoyment, in the midst of busy, active, troublous life, of one calm day's angling by the side of a fair stream, with quiet beauty all around us, and no adversary but the speckled trout."
"And why should they be your foes?" asked Edith. "Why should you drag them from their cool, clear element to pant and die in the dry upper air?"
"'Cause we want to eat? em," said a voice from the door behind her; "they eats everything. Why shou'dn't we eat them? Darn this world; it is but a place for eating and being eaten. The bivers that I trap eat fish, and many a cunning trick the crafty critters use to catch 'em; the minks eat birds and birds' eggs. Men talk about beasts of prey. Why, everything is a beast of prey, eating the oxen and the sheep, and such like; and sometimes I have thought it hard to kill them, who never do harm to no one, and a great deal of good sometimes. But come, Master Walter, don't ye keep them fish in the sun. Give 'em to black Rosie, the cook, and let us have some on 'em for breakfast afore they're all wilted up."
The man who spoke might have been five feet five or six in height, and was anything but corpulent. Yet he was in chest and shoulders as broad as a bull; and though the lower limbs were more lightly formed than the upper, yet the legs, as well as the arms, displayed strong, rounded muscles, swelling forth at every movement. His hair was as black as jet, without the slightest mixture of gray, though he could not be less than fifty-four or fifty-five years of age; and his face, which was handsome, with features somewhat eagle-like, was browned by exposure to a color nearly resembling that of mahogany. With his shaggy bearskin cap, well worn, and a frock of deerskin, with the hair on, descending to the knees, he looked more like a bison than anything human; and, half expecting to hear him roar, the stranger was surprised to trace tones soft and gentle, though somewhat nasal, to such a rude and rugged form.
While Walter carried his basket of fish to the kitchen, and Mr. Prevost's guest was gazing at the newcomer, in whom Edith seemed to recognize an acquaintance, the master of the house himself approached from behind the latter, saying as he came. "Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Brooks, Major Kielmansegge--Captain Jack Brooks."
"Pooh, pooh, Prevost!" exclaimed the other. "Call me by my right name. I was Captain Brooks long agone. I'm new christened, and called Woodchuck now. That's because I burrow, Major. Them Ingians are wonderful circumdiferous; but they have found that when they try tricks with me, I can burrow under them; and so they call me Woodchuck, 'cause it's a burrowing sort of a beast."
"I do not exactly understand you," said the gentleman who had been called Major Kielmansegge. "What is the exact meaning of circumdiferous?"
"It means just circumventing like," answered the Woodchuck. "First and foremost, there's many of the Ingians--the Algonquin, for a sample--never tell a word of truth. No, no, not they. One of them told me so plainly one day. 'Woodchuck,' says he, 'Ingian seldom tell truth. He know better than that. Truth too good a thing to be used every day; keep that for time of need.' I believe at that precious moment he spoke the truth the first time for forty years."
The announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but seemed to afford him great satisfaction, and at the meal, certainly, he ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvelous. He seemed to think some apology necessary, indeed, for his furious appetite. "You see, Major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I eat nothing for four or five days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."