A SAD INCIDENT. 69 



heard him howl, doubtless in anger because he had 

 missed making supper off me. 



At the time I could not help thinking that my host 

 had been needlessly alarmed, and told him so, when 

 he informed me that nothing would have induced him 

 to return alone in fact, that he would sooner have 

 lost his traps than do so ; that a painter in those 

 regions, more especially in winter, was much to be 

 dreaded, and in corroboration informed me of a little 

 tragedy that occurred some years past in the same 

 neighbourhood. Two friends once trapped the town- 

 ship of Success. They had two beats, running in 

 reverse directions, while the shanty in which they both 

 lived together was situated at the dividing point from 

 which each radiated. The one who examined the 

 traps to the north to-day, visited those to the south 

 to-morrow, changing their routes with each other daily, 

 and always meeting at night at their common resi- 

 dence. Almost half the season had thus passed 

 away, when one of the companions who had returned 

 to the sleeping place, became seriously alarmed at 

 the continued absence of his friend. At length the 

 little cur dog who constantly accompanied the missing 

 man came home alone. There is an end to everything, 

 and so there is to a long winter night ; and with the 

 earliest indications of day the anxious watcher sallied 

 forth to find the missing trapper, whom he, after a 

 long and weary search, discovered dreadfully mangled 

 and partially eaten. The assassin had been a painter. 

 The tracks on the tell-tale snow spoke correctly. 

 About thirty feet above where the corpse lay, an 

 immense limb ran out at right angles from the parent 



