egion was an Irishman named Michael Clark, who had had considerable
experience in gathering furs along the Mississippi. It was at his
suggestion that Greville was founded, and one-half of their periodical
journeys thus cut off. On the year following, Clark was shot and killed
by a prowling Indian. Since his wife had been dead a long time, the only
child, Terence, was thus left an orphan. The lad was a bright,
good-natured fellow, liked by every one, and he made his home with the
family of one of the other hunters named Rufus MacClaskey. The boy was
fifteen years old on the very day that he walked over to the cabin of
Fred Linden and asked him to help him hunt for the missing cow.

The family of George Linden, while he was away, consisted of his wife,
his daughter Edith, fourteen, and his son Fred, sixteen years old. All
were ruddy cheeked, strong and vigorous, and among the best to do of the
thirty-odd families that made up the population of Greville.

"Has the cow ever been lost before?" asked Fred, as he and the Irish lad
swung along beside each other, neither thinking it worth while to burden
himself with a rifle.

"Niver that I knows of, and I would know the same if she had been lost;
we're onaisy about the cow, for you see that if this kaaps on and she
doesn't come back I'll have to live on something else than bread and
milk and praties."

"Our cow came back just at sunset last night."

"And so did them all, exciptin' our own, which makes me more onwillin'
to accipt any excuse she may have to give."

"Let me see, Terry; Brindle wore a bell round her neck, didn't she?"

"That she did, and she seemed quite proud of the same."

"Did you make hunt for her last night?"

"I hunted as long as I could see to hunt; she wasn't missed, that is
till after they got home. Whin I found that I didn't find her I started
to find her; but I hadn't time to hunt very long whin it got dark and I
had to give it up."

"And didn't you hear any thing of the bell?"

"Do ye think that if I heard the bell I wouldn't have found the cow? Why
was the bell put round her neck if it wasn't to guide friends? I
listened many a time after it got dark, but niver a tinkle did I hear."

"That is queer," said Fred half to himself; "for, when no wind is
blowing and it is calm, you can hear that bell a long ways; father has
caught the sound in the woods, when the Brindle was all of a mile off. I
wonder whether she could have lost the bell."

"