pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute
you."

[Illustration: Interior of a Mystery Lodge.]

CHAPTER XIII.

It was well for Austin Edwards and his brothers, that their
acquaintance with their friend the hunter commenced during one of
their holidays, so that they were enabled to pay him a visit more
frequently than they otherwise could have done. The life led by the
hunter would have been far too solitary for most people; but his long
wanderings in the extended prairies, and his long sojournings in
places remote from society, had rendered the quiet tranquillity of
country scenes pleasant to him: yet, still, as variety has its charms,
it afforded him a pleasant change, whenever the three brothers visited
him.

In his younger days, he had entered on the life of a hunter and
trapper with much ardour. To pursue the buffalo (or, more properly
speaking, the bison) of the prairie, the deer, and other animals, and
to mingle with the different tribes of Indians, was his delight. With
wild animals and wild men he became familiar, and even the very
dangers that beset his path gave an interest to his pursuits: but his
youth was gone, his manhood was declining, and the world that he once
looked upon as an abiding dwelling-place, he now regarded as the
pathway to a better home.

Time was, when to urge the arrow or the spear into the heart of the
flying prey for mere diversion, and to join in the wild war-whoop of
contending tribes, was congenial to his spirit; but his mind had been
sobered, so that now to practise forbearance and kindness was far more
pleasant than to indulge in cruelty and revenge. He looked on mankind
as one great family, which ought to dwell in brotherly love; and he
regarded the animal creation as given by a heavenly Hand, for the use,
and not the abuse, of man.

In relating the scenes in which he had mingled in earlier years, he
was aware that he could not avoid calling up, in some measure, in the
youthful hearts of his auditors, the natural desire to see what was
new and strange and wonderful, without reflecting a moment on the good
or the evil of the thing set before them: but he endeavoured to blend
with his descriptions such remarks as would lead them to love what was
right and to hate what was wrong. Regarding the Indian tribes as an
injured people, he sought to set before his young friends the wrongs
and oppressions practised on the r