dictate terms for his own services. And it is no wonder that a man of his
dark cunning, working on one of the obtuse moral sense, the love of money,
and the thoughtlessness of consequences, of Elwood, should, as he did, soon
completely succeed in his objects. For, after having kindled Elwood's
political prejudices against the embargo law, which was held up to be such
an outrage on the commercial rights of the North that it were almost a
merit to violate it, Gaut proceeded to show how enormous were the profits
to be made in this trade, and how safely the goods might be smuggled in,
through the back roads and forest routes with which he was familiar, by
employing Frenchmen, as he could, at a cheap rate, to bring them in large
panniers on the backs of their Canadian ponies, or by engaging Indians, who
could be enlisted for even less wages, to bring them in knapsacks through
the woods. And so clearly did he demonstrate all this to the mind of
Elwood, that the latter, being unable any longer to resist the temptation
of thus securing the gains of a traffic, by the side of which the small
profits of his store at home dwindled into contempt, soon resolved to
engage in it.

From this time Gaut was in high favor with Elwood. The two, indeed, seemed
to have suddenly become inseparable. They were always found together, and
always engaged in some closely private conversation, the purport of which
no others were permitted to know, or were enabled to conjecture, except
from the new business movement which was observed soon to follow the
forming of their mysterious connection. And that movement was that Elwood
put his store in charge of a clerk, and, giving out that he was about to
engage more extensively in the fur trade, which would require him to be
often absent, went off with a strong and fleet double team, in a northerly
direction, with Gaut for his only companion.

With the advent of this new era in the life of Elwood, every thing became