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High branch'd the pines, and far the colonnade Of tapering trunks stood glimmering through the glen; So joyed the hunters in their lonely glade." "Hurra! the stragglers have arrived!" exclaimed Codman, the first to notice the hunter and Claud as they shot into the mouth of the small, quiet river, on whose bank was busily progressing the work of the incipient encampment.
"That can be done easily enough," said Codman, "that is, if we will tax our marrow-bones a little extra in pulling at the oars. The distance over this lake, up the narrows, or river, and across the end of the Maguntic to the mouth of that second stream we have talked of, can't be much more than a dozen miles, and all smooth sailing.
This story, with the accompanying proposal, presented, as Gaut well knew, the most tempting inducement that could be offered, to trappers. But it made no impression on Phillips and Codman. They deeply distrusted the man, his whole story, and the motives which they believed moved him to concoct it.
Phillips and Codman, having procured a wide strip of the outer bark of the white birch, ever the woodman's substitute for writing paper, when writing becomes necessary, then proceeded to draw a map, from personal recollection, of the strangely-irregular lake in question.
"The man is hurried!" said Phillips to Codman, as they left Elwood's on a second and last visit, made with the sole object of dissuading him from a step which they shrank from themselves, that of going into the distant forest with such a desperate fellow as they now deeply suspected Gaut Gurley to be, "the man is evidently hurried.
"Hillo, captain, or captain of the house, as I suppose you must be," he sang out cheerily, as with slackening step he approached Elwood; "did you ever hear spoken of, a certain rough-and-ready talking sort of a chap they call Jonas Codman?" "I have heard of a Mr. Codman, and was told that he would probably be here to-day," doubtfully replied Elwood.
"It's Tomah, the young red man from the Connecticut-river region, who hunted some in this section last fall, I understand. I supposed you had met him before," replied Gaut. "O, ah, well, yes," responded Codman; "I bethink me, now, it is the young Indian that went to college, but couldn't be kept there long enough to make any thing else, though long enough, may be, to spoil him for a hunter."
"O, Phillips is right enough about that," added Codman, now evidently fast regaining his usual buoyancy of spirits; "yes, right enough about that, whether he was about that plaguey switching he gave us, or not. Why, I can feel a great change in the air here already! warm enough, soon; safe, at any rate; so, hurra for life and home, which, being once so honestly lost, will now be clear gain.
And Polly Codman git out of de way dere, and let Polly Codman come up! here, Polly, is a pair of gloves for you and a muffler for Codman, and here is more gloves and neckties and I got a lot more; I didn't got much time and I bought dem all in a hurry and dey are all from me and Masie and don't you forgit dot.
And, in the active exertions which Phillips and Codman, in the vain search for evidence or some clue to the robbery of the furs, perseveringly kept up during the whole of the long and dreary winter that followed, he could not be induced to take any decided part.
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