was for any considerable length of time without
the stub of a marvelously black pipe in his mouth, filled with plug
tobacco, shaved and rubbed in his hand into a proper condition for
smoking. Mark, though by no means an intemperate man, is fond of a
drop now and then, and when he has just a thimbleful too much, the way
he will swear is emphatically a sin. And yet he is anything but
quarrelsome or contrary, even when a shade over the line of strict
sobriety. He is a great, strong, square-shouldered, big-breasted,
good-natured specimen of the genus homo, a giant in physical strength,
and were I a wolf, I would prefer letting him alone to any man in
these parts. When he gets just the least grain "shiny" (and he never
gets beyond that), and his oar goes a little wrong, or a twig brushes
him ungently, or his seat gets a little hard, he will express his
sense of its improper deportment by incontinently damning its eyes,
and so forth, as if it were a sentient thing, and understood all his
profane denunciations; but with all this, Mark never forgets to be
respectful, and, in his way, courteous to his employers. He has,
moreover, a sharp, clear eye in his head, and can see a deer, or any
other game, as quick, and shoot it as far as the best, and has as good
a knowledge of where they are to be found, as any man in these woods."

"Well," continued Martin, as he lighted his pipe by dipping it into
the embers and scooping up a small coal; "Well, Mark Shuff and a
friend of his by the name of Westcott, had a shanty one winter over on
Tupper's Lake; they were trappin' martin, and mink, and muskrat, and
wolves, when they could get one. They shantied on the outlet, just at
the foot of the lake, below the high rocky bluff round which the
little bay there sweeps. There wasn't any house then nearer than
Harriets Town, down by the Lower Saranac; but there was a company of
lumbermen having a shanty up towards the head of the lake, near where
the Bog River enters. Mark, one cold winter's morning, started on an
errand to the lumber shanty I speak of, calculatin' to return the same
evening. The lake was frozen over, and he took to the ice, as being
the nearest and best travelin'. The winter had set in airly, and the
snow had lain deep for months, and the game of the woods had got
pretty well starved out. Mark did'nt take his rifle with him, thinkin'
of course that he would see no game on the ice worth shootin', and a
gun would only be an incumb