"Hurrah! hurrah !" cried Hobson, "it is mine!"
"And mine!" said another voice, and a stranger stept forward and placed his foot upon the fox just as the Lieutenant was about to raise it.
Hobson drew back in astonishment. He thought the second ball had been fired by the Sergeant, and found himself face to face with a stranger whose gun was still smoking.
The rivals gazed at each other in silence.
The rest of the party now approached, and the stranger was quickly joined by twelve comrades, four of whom were like himself " Canadian travellers," and eight Chippeway Indians.
The leader was a tall man-a fine specimen of his class-those Canadian trappers described in the romances of Washington Irving, whose competition Hobson had dreaded with such good reason. He wore the traditional costume ascribed to his fellow-hunters by the great American writer; a blanket loosely arranged about his person, a striped cotton shirt, wide cloth trousers, leather gaiters, deerskin mocassins, and a sash of checked woollen stuff round the waist, from which were suspended his knife, tobacco-pouch, pipe, and a few useful tools.
Hobson was right. The man before him was a Frenchman, or at least a descendant of the French Canadians, perhaps an agent of the American Company come to act as a spy on the settlers in the fort. The other four Canadians wore a costume resembling that of their leader, but of coarser materials.
The Frenchman bowed politely to Mrs Barnett, and the Lieutenant was the first to break the silence, during which he had not removed his eyes from his rival's face.
"This fox is mine, sir," he said quietly.
"It is if you killed it !" replied the other in good English, but with a slightly foreign accent.