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The man had two alert and wide-awake companions, and they were a brace of finely-bred Gordon setters, which, after beating the bushes on both sides of the road in the vain effort to put up a grouse or start a hare, now came in, and lay down near the wagon.

They were a sight for a sportsman's eye, and that same sportsman would very naturally ask himself how it came that this poverty-stricken fellow could afford to own dogs that would have won honors at any bench-show in the land.

"Yes, I reckon them dog-brutes air just about nice," Silas said, whenever any inquisitive person propounded this inquiry to him, "and they were given to me for a present by a couple of city shooters who once hired me for a guide. You see, birds of all sorts, and 'specially woodcock, was mighty skeerce that year, but I took 'em where there was a little bunch that I was a saving for my own shooting, and they had the biggest kind of sport. They give me them dogs in consequence of my perliteness to 'em."

There was no one in the neighborhood who could dispute this story, but there were those who took note of the fact that at certain times the dogs disappeared as completely as though they had never existed, and that they were never seen when there were any strange sportsmen in the vicinity.