to start myself for a little shootin' in the Sandusky
river."

"Then, I presume," said Grantham, with a smile, "you are
well provided with silver bullets, Desborough--for, in
the hurry of departure, you seem likely to forget the
only medium through which leaden ones can be made available:
not a rifle or a shot-gun do I see."

The Yankee fixed his eye for a moment, with a penetrating
expression, on the youth, as if he would have sought a
meaning deeper than the words implied. His reading seemed
to satisfy him that all was right.

"What," he observed, with a leer, half cunning half
insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp,
the last time I hunted there."

"In that case," observed the laughing Middlemore, to whom
the opportunity was irresistible, "you are going out on
a WILD GOOSE CHASE, indeed. Your prospects of a good
hunt, as you call it, cannot be said to be SURE AS A GUN,
for in regard to the latter, you may depend some one has
discovered and RIFLED it before this."

"You seem to have laid in a store of provisions for this
trip, Desborough," remarked Henry Grantham; "how long do
you purpose being absent?"

"I guess three or four days," was the sullen reply.