smile: "Say, we come quite a piece, hain't we?"

During the conversation the dog stalked solemnly about, took a careful
look at the shanty and its surroundings and disappeared in the thick
timber in the direction of the brook. The trapper turned and looked
after him, and a wistful, almost apologetic expression came into his
face.

"I presume likely the old dog is sore about something," he remarked,
when the hound was well out of hearing. "He's been kind er down in the
mouth all day."

"'Twarn't nothin' we said 'bout huntin' over to Lily Pond, was it?"
ventured Freme.

"No--guess not," replied the trapper thoughtfully. "But you know
you've got to handle him jest so. He's gettin' techier and older every
day."

Imaginative as a child, with a subtle humour, often inventing stories
that were weird and impossible, this strange character had lived the
life of a hermit and a wanderer in the wilderness--a life compelling
him to seek his companions among the trees or the black sides of
the towering mountains. All nature, to him, was human--the dog was a
being.

The Clown swung his double-bitted axe into a dry hemlock, the keen
blade sinking deeper and deeper into the tree with each successive
stroke, made with the precision and rapidity of a piston, until the
tree fell with a sweeping crash (it had been as smoothly severed as if