Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE TRAPPER’S LODGE. : yt if it were strong enough to move these giant trees yonder— and there is no foliage worth mentioning so near the borders of the burnt district.” After another half-hour’s tramp, Gage stopped again, and leaning on his rifle, with the breech resting on a stump, greatly to the annoyance of Fletcher, who was never gullty of such unsportsmanlike habits, and looking up into the glorious blue sky, now covered with large white clouds all - drifting away off to the north, like an army with banners, hurrying to a distant battle-field—and then all about him as far as the eye could reach, he turned to Fletcher, and asked, “Where are we ?” | “Let us go back to the lodge,” said Fletcher. ‘“ We are only losing time—I have thought so, for the last hour, but have been afraid to say so, lest you might think I was done up, or unwilling to stand by you to the last.” “You are right, my friend. Back it is, then; and to-mor- row we will be up, if you say so, bright and early, and see what we can make of the dread mystery.” | And back they went to the trapper’s lodge—hardly a word being spoken on their way. 7 “ Surely,” said Gage, in a whisper, as they entered the door, clutching at the arm of his companion—‘ surely somebody must have been here”—casting his eyes round the lodge with a feeling of uneasiness he would. have been slow to acknowl- edge even to himself. ‘ We never could have left that heap of dry brush so near that bed of coals and white ashes—a breath of wind or a spark might have set the lodge afire.” Fletcher thought so too—for these were coals of juniper ; but on looking round for confirmation, he could see nothing —no traces—no change, absolutely nothing to justify the be- lief that the lodge had been visited while they were away. “The pile of spruce branches, the cedar bed—the broken bench were all undisturbed—eyen the dirty blanket hung over the _ end of a log just as they had left it. | All at once, however, it occured to» Gage to go to the door-and “look at the weather ;” as he did so, an excla- mation escaped him, and calling to Fletcher, he pointed to the tracks of a dog and of snow-shoes, the largest he had ever seen, comicbooks.com >