protection of a frontier state. Again and again have I tried to find
one of those early friends, and in many places have I inquired, but
my humble companions have disappeared and left no signs, like country
children one played with in holiday times.

It appears, however, that I have not been the only lover of the
trapper stories, nor the only one who has missed his friends, for I
received a letter not long ago from a bookman telling me that he had
seen my complaint somewhere, and sending me the Frontier Angel on
loan strictly that I might have an hour's sinless enjoyment. He also
said he was on the track of Bill Bidden, another famous trapper, and
hoped to send me word that Bill was found, whose original value was
sixpence, but for whom this bookman was now prepared to pay gold.
One, of course, does not mean that the Indian and trapper stories had
the same claim to be literature as the Pilgrim's Progress, for, be it
said with reverence, there was not much distinction in the style, or
art in the narrative, but they were romances, and their subjects
suited boys, who are barbarians, and there are moments when we are
barbarians again, and above all things these tales bring back the
days of long ago. It was later that one fell under the power of two
more mature and exacting charmers, Mayne Reid's Rifle Rangers and
Dumas' Monte Christo. The Rangers has vanished with many another
possession of the past, but I still retain in a grateful memory the
scene where Rube, the Indian fighter, who is supposed to have
perished in a prairie fire and is being mourned by the hero, emerges
with much humour from the inside of a buffalo which was lying dead
upon the plain, and rails at the idea that he could be wiped out so
easily. Whether imagination has been at work or not I do not know,
but that is how my memory has it now, and to this day I count that
resurrection a piece of most fetching work.