e results. When we reach a certain
distance where these beasts are said to abound, I am to have the liberal
examination of the specimen."

Paul continued to listen, in the most profound silence, until the
Doctor concluded his singular but characteristic explanation; then the
incredulous bee-hunter shook his head, and saw fit to reply, by saying--

"Stranger, old Ishmael has burrowed you in the very bottom of a hollow
tree, where your eyes will be of no more use than the sting of a drone.
I, too, know something of that very wagon, and I may say that I have
lined the squatter down into a flat lie. Harkee, friend; do you think a
girl, like Ellen Wade, would become the companion of a wild beast?"

"Why not? why not?" repeated the naturalist; "Nelly has a taste,
and often listens with pleasure to the treasures that I am sometimes
compelled to scatter in this desert. Why should she not study the habits
of any animal, even though it were a rhinoceros?"

"Softly, softly," returned the equally positive, and, though less
scientific, certainly, on this subject, better instructed bee-hunter;
"Ellen is a girl of spirit, and one too that knows her own mind, or
I'm much mistaken; but with all her courage and brave looks, she is no
better than a woman after all. Haven't I often had the girl crying--"

"You are an acquaintance, then, of Nelly's?"

"The devil a bit. But I know woman is woman; and all the books in
Kentucky couldn't make Ellen Wade go into a tent alone with a ravenous
beast!"

"It seems to me," the trapper calmly observed, "that there is something
dark and hidden in this matter. I am a witness that the traveller likes
none to look into the tent, and I have a proof more sure than what
either of you can lay claim to, that the wagon does not carry the cage
of a beast. Here is Hector, come of a breed with noses as true and
faithful as a hand that is all-powerful has made any of their kind, and
had there been a beast in the place, the hound would long since have
told it to his master."

"Do you pretend to oppose a dog to a man! brutality to learning!
instinct to reason!" exclaimed the Doctor in some heat. "In what manner,
pray, can a hound distinguish the habits, species, or even the genus of
an animal, like reasoning, learned, scientific, triumphant man!"

"In what manner!" coolly repeated the veteran woodsman. "Listen; and if
you believe that a schoolmaster can make a quicker wit than the Lord,
you shall be made to