"Who is Oscar Preston?" asked Frank, as he seated himself on the log beside his cousin.
"Oh, he's the village pot-hunter!" Leon answered, throwing as much contempt into his tones as he could.
"Pot-hunter?" repeated Frank.
"Yes. He's a market-shooter. He doesn't hunt game for the fun of it, as you and I, and all other decent fellows do, but he does it to make money out of it. He is too lazy to earn a living in any respectable way; and, besides, as he comes of a dishonest family, no one in town will employ him. You see, he and his brother used to work in Smith & Anderson's grocery store. Oscar was one of the clerks, and his brother was book-keeper and cashier. Just before you came here, his brother disappeared all of a sudden, and has never been heard of since. After he was gone his books were examined, and it was found that he was a defaulter to the amount of three thousand dollars. Smith & Anderson didn't like that very well, and believing that if there was one thief in the Preston family there might be another, they thought it was best to give Oscar his walking-papers."
"Does he make any money by shooting for the market?" asked Frank.
"I should say he did. There is a mortgage of five hundred dollars on his mother's place (his father is dead, you know), and Oscar has paid off a hundred dollars of it since he left the store. He's got a leaky old scow, a double-barrel blunderbuss that you and I wouldn't pick up in the street, and a half starved hound. The scow he uses for hunting ducks on the river, and with the hound he runs foxes and rabbits. When summer comes, I suppose he will fish all the time. He can catch black bass where nobody else would ever think of looking for them, and he can sell every one of them for ten cents a pound."
"But what right had he to destroy your snares?"
"He had no right to do it, for he is not game-constable."
"What sort of a constable is that!" asked Frank.