The settler stood confounded.  His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers at the boldness and determination of this language.  Singly, he could hare crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being assailed by the other; nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed.  Moreover, although they had kept their cloaks carefully wrapped around their persons, there could be little doubt that both officers were armed, not, as they had originally given him to understand, with fowling pieces, but with (at the present close quarters at least) far more efficient weapons—­pistols.  He was relieved from his embarrassment by Middlemore exclaiming: 

“Nay, do not press the poor devil, Grantham; I dare say the story of his hunting is all a hum, and that the fact is, he is merely going to earn an honest penny in one of his free commercial speculations—­a little contraband,” pointing with his finger to the bows, “is it not Desborough?”

“Why now, officer,” said the Yankee, rapidly assuming a dogged air, as if ashamed of the discovery that had been so acutely made, “I expect you won’t hurt a poor fellor for doin’ a little in this way.  Drot me, these are hard times, and this here war jist beginnin’, quite pits one to one’s shifts.”

“This might do, Desborough, were your present freight an arrival instead of a departure, but we all know that contraband is imported, not exported.”

“Mighty cute you are, I guess,” replied the settler, warily, with something like the savage grin of the wild cat, to which he had so recently alluded; “but I expect it would be none so strange to have packed up a few dried hog skins to stow away the goods I am goin’ for.”

“I should like to try the effect of a bullet among the skins,” said Grantham, leisurely drawing forth and cocking a pistol, after having whispered something in the ear of his companion.

“Nay, officer,” said Desborough, now for the first time manifesting serious alarm—­“you sure-Ly don’t mean to bore a hole through them innocent skins?”

“True,” said Middlemore, imitating, “if he fires, the hole will be something more than skin deep I reckon—­these pistols, to my knowledge, send a bullet through a two inch plank at twenty paces.”

As Middlemore thus expressed himself, both he and Grantham saw, or fancied they saw, the blankets slightly agitated.

“Good place for hide that,” said the former, addressing his pun to the Yankee, on whom however it was totally lost, “show us those said skins, my good fellow, and if we find they are not filled with any thing it would be treason in a professed British subject to export thus clandestinely, we promise that you shall depart without further hindrance.”

“Indeed, officer,” muttered the settler, sullenly and doggedly, “I shan’t do no sich thing.  Yon don’t belong to the custom-house I reckon, and so I wish you a good day, for I have a considerable long course to run, and must be movin’.”  Then, seizing the paddles that were lying on the sand, he prepared to shove the canoe from the beach.