Little Tolly Trevor and Leaping Buck¹—being about the same age, and having similar tastes and propensities², though very unlike each other in temperament—soon became fast friends, and they both regarded Mahoghany Drake, the trapper, with almost idolatrous affection.

“Would you care to come wi’ me to-day, Tolly? I’m goin’ to look for some meat on the heights.”

It was thus that Drake announced his intention to go a-hunting one fine morning after he had disposed of a breakfast that might have sustained an ordinary man for several days.

“Care to go with ye!” echoed Tolly, “I just think I should. But, look here, Mahoghany,” continued the boy, with a troubled expression, “I’ve promised to go out on the lake to-day wi’ Leaping Buck, an’ I must keep my promise. You know you told us only last night in that story about the Chinaman and the grizzly³ that no true man ever breaks his promise.”

“Right, lad, right” returned the trapper, “but you can go an’ ask the little Buck to jine us, an’ if he’s inclined you can both come—only you must agree to leave yer tongues behind ye if ye do, for it behoves hunters to be silent, and from my experience of you I raither think yer too fond o’ chatterin’.”

Before Drake had quite concluded his remark Tolly was off in search of his red-skinned bosom⁴ friend.

The manner in which the friendship between the red boy and the white was instituted and kept up was somewhat peculiar⁵ and almost incomprehensible, for neither spoke⁶ the language of the other except to a very slight extent. Leaping Buck’s father had, indeed, picked up a pretty fair smattering of English during his frequent expeditions into the gold-fields, which, at the period we write of, were being rapidly developed. Paul Bevan, too, during occasional hunting expeditions among the red men, had acquired a considerable knowledge of the dialect spoken in that part of the country, but Leaping Buck had not visited the diggings with his father, so that his knowledge of English was confined to the smattering which he had picked up from Paul and his father. In like manner Tolly Trevor’s acquaintance with the native tongue consisted of the little that had been imparted to him by his friend Paul Bevan. Mahoghany Drake, on the contrary, spoke Indian fluently, and it must be understood that in the

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