“No doubt, I ought to feel very grateful toward Uncle Ruben for the offer he has just made me, but I can’t say that I do,” soliloquized George Edwards, as he trudged along the dusty road, with his heavy bundle slung over his shoulder. “I am almost seventeen years old now, and I am getting too big to work for my board and clothes. I am not obliged to do it, for I can clear a dollar a day up here in the woods, and, as my living will not cost me anything to speak of, I can save enough money by next spring to take me so far away from this miserable place that I shall never hear of it again. I know I shall be very lonely, but I shall have peace and comfort, and be well out of the reach of Aunt Polly Ann’s sharp tongue.”

Here George turned off the main road, and letting down a pair of bars that gave entrance into an extensive sheep pasture, once more shouldered his bundle and directed his course along a blind path which ran through a thick grove of evergreens. Fortunately he did not know what the future had in store for him.

The peace and comfort he hoped to find in his forest home were to be denied him. Already skillful plots, that were intended to work his ruin, were being laid against him, and George was destined to see the day when he almost wished that he had accepted his uncle’s offer; but then it was too late.

“It seems to me that things might be made to work smoother and easier for some of us,” said George, to himself, as he took off his hat and stopped for a moment under the wide-spreading branches of the evergreens to enjoy the grateful shade. “Dame Fortune has nothing but smiles for some folks, and, as she hasn’t got enough to go round, the rest of us have to take frowns. Now, look at those fellows! If I had as much money as their guns cost, I could get an education that would enable me to be of some use in the world. Never mind; I’ll have it yet.”

George settled his hat on his head with a vigorous slap, and, running down the path, presently emerged from the evergreens, and found himself on the outskirts of a little field, which had been cultivated in the years gone by, but was now given over to briers and huckleberry bushes.

On the opposite side of this field, which was entirely surrounded by woods, was a huge rock, at whose base a spring of pure, cold water bubbled up.

Stretched at their ease on the grass near this spring were the “fellows,” the sight of whom, as he caught a momentary glimpse of them through the trees, had started George on the train of thought with which he closed his soliloquy.

Their dress and accoutrements seemed to indicate that they had come out for a hunt; although it is hard to tell what they intended to shoot, it being too late in the season for ruffed grouse and quails, and too early for young squirrels. They were all the sons of rich men—almost inseparable companions—and were rapidly acquiring the reputation of being a “hard crowd.”

Careful and judicious fathers cautioned their sons against associating with them; but that did not seem to trouble these young fellows, who kept on enjoying themselves in their own way, and paying no heed to what others might say or think of them.

They were engaged in earnest conversation, and so deeply engrossed were they in the subject under discussion, whatever it was, that they did not hear the sound of George’s approaching footsteps until he had come quite near to them.

“I tell you, boys,” he heard one of them say, “that will be a ten-strike, and we can start on our western trip as soon as we please. You know that old Stebbins will not trust any of the banks, and consequently he must have the money in his house.”

“But, of course, he keeps it stowed away in some snug hiding-place,” said one of his companions, “and we don’t know where that is. What good will it do to break into the house if we can’t find the money after we—”

The boy finished the sentence by uttering a cry of alarm and springing to his feet.

His two companions, who were no less alarmed, also jumped up, and were astonished beyond measure to see George Edwards standing within a few feet of them.

For a few seconds they stood regarding him with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets, while their faces grew whiter and their knees trembled beneath them.

The one who had last spoken was the first to recover his speech and power of action. Snatching up the hammerless gun that lay in the grass at his feet, he called out in savage tones:

“What are you doing here? Make yourself scarce at once, or I’ll—”

“What are you about, Benson?” cried one of his companions, seizing the double-barrel, and giving its owner a look that was full of significance. “Why, man alive, have you taken leave of your senses? Don’t you see who that is? It’s Edwards—George Edwards.”

“So it is,” said Benson, lowering his gun, and calling a sickly smile to his frightened face. “You’ll not feel very highly complimented, I know, George, but the fact is I took you for a tramp.”

His two companions laughed loudly, and George smiled and threw his bundle down beside the spring.

“That’s a good joke on you, Benson,” said one of the young hunters who answered to the name of Wallace. “When we return to the village, you’ll have to set up the cigars, if you want us to keep still about it.”

“It’s a bargain,” replied Benson, laying his gun on the ground and seating himself beside it. “Are you travelling, George, or just going somewhere?”

“I am going somewhere,” answered George, as he took a tin cup from his bundle and dipped it into the spring.

“Got a job?”

“No—don’t want any, as long as I remain in this country.”

“Going out to your cabin by the lake?”

George replied that he was; and, having drained his cup, he leaned over to fill it again, the three hunters improving the opportunity to exchange glances that were full of meaning.

“How are you going to make a living out there during the winter?” inquired Benson. “In summer you can fish and pick berries; but when the snow covers the ground, and the lake is frozen clear to the bottom, then what?”

“The lake doesn’t freeze clear to the bottom,” said George, with a laugh. “I can supply the village with the muskalonge that I shall spear through the ice—I shall have a monopoly of that trade, you know, for the lake is so far away that no one thinks of going up there in winter—and the snow will afford me the means of tracking minks, raccoons and hares.”

“Hares! You mean rabbits, I suppose?”

“No, I don’t. There are no wild rabbits in America.”

Benson opened his eyes, and showed a disposition to argue that point, but he was checked by a look from Wallace. He evidently understood just what it meant, for he settled back on his elbow and relapsed into silence.

None of the hunters had anything to say after that, and George, believing that his absence would suit them better than his company, shouldered his bundle, said good-by, and struck into the path that led to the hills.

“You’re a good one, Benson, you are!” exclaimed Wallace, as soon as he had satisfied himself that George was out of hearing. “You gave us dead away, in the first place, and then kept him here by talking to him.”

“I wanted to allay his suspicions, if he had any,” replied Benson. “That was the reason I talked to him.”

“Was that the reason why you pointed your gun at him?” inquired the hunter who had not spoken before, and whose name was Forbes.

“I was a little too hasty, that’s a fact,” said Benson. “But you remember what we were talking about, do you not? Well, when I looked up and saw him standing there, almost within reach of us, I was so badly frightened that I didn’t know what I was doing. Do you suppose he heard anything?”

“Of course he heard something,” growled Wallace, in reply. “He must be deaf if he didn’t.”

“But do you think he suspected anything?”

“Ah, that’s another question! I hope not; but there’s no telling. I can tell you one thing, however. There isn’t room enough in the hills for George Edwards and our party, too, and one or the other must go.”

“I was thinking of that myself,” said Forbes. “He might discover something, you know, while he’s prowling around in search of his minks and coons. Couldn’t we drive him out by burning his shanty?”

“We might put him to some trouble, but we couldn’t drive him out in that way,” replied Wallace. “George is handy with an axe, and in two days’ time he could build another cabin, and perhaps he would be smart enough to keep watch of it. But I shall not draw an easy breath as long as he is up there. If he should happen to stumble upon our cache? Whew! We must think about this, boys, and decide upon something.”

Meanwhile, George Edwards was plodding along towards the lake, and while he walked he pondered deeply. The incidents of the last half hour perplexed and astonished him. What was the meaning of Benson’s unwarrantable excitement? and what was it that had caused the alarm so plainly visible on the faces of the three hunters when they first became aware of his approach?

“Benson never took me for a tramp,” said George to himself. “That story was a fraud on the face of it. And, then, what business had they to be talking about old man Stebbins, and the money he is supposed to have in his house? It is a wonder to me that he hasn’t been robbed a dozen times.”

There were one or two other points in the conversation he had overheard that came into the boy’s mind, but to which he did not then attach any importance. He did not think of them again until some days had passed away, and then they were recalled to his recollection in a most unexpected manner.

It was fifteen miles from George’s old home to his home in the woods, and, as the road that led to it (if the blind path he followed could be called a road) ran up hill nearly all the way, it took him a long time to cover the distance—much longer than it usually did, for he was encumbered by his heavy bundle.

The sun was sinking behind the trees when he came out of the bushes and stopped to rest for a moment on a little promontory that jutted out into the deep-blue bosom of Lone Lake—a beautiful sheet of water, nine miles long and half as wide, and situated twenty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea—at least, that was what the young surveyors at the Montford Academy said.

George gazed upon its mirror-like surface as one gazes upon the face of a friend from whom he has long been separated. It had yielded him and his mother a support and kept a roof over their heads for two long years, and it was his main dependence now.

If any one had told him, that before the sun had again been reflected in those calm waters half a score of times, some scenes would be enacted there that would change the whole course of his life, George would not have put the least faith in the statement; but it would have been the truth, nevertheless.