where your eyes will be of no more use than the sting of a drone. I, too, know
something of that very wagon, and I may say that I have lined the squatter down
into a flat lie. Harkee, friend; do you think a girl, like Ellen Wade, would
become the companion of a wild beast?«
    »Why not! why not!« repeated the naturalist; »Nelly has a taste, and often
listens with pleasure to the treasures that I am sometimes compelled to scatter
in this desert. Why should she not study the habits of any animal, even though
it were a rhinoceros!«
    »Softly, softly,« returned the equally positive, and, though less
scientific, certainly, on this subject, better instructed bee-hunter; »Ellen is
a girl of spirit, and one too that knows her own mind, or I'm much mistaken; but
with all her courage and brave looks, she is no better than a woman after all.
Haven't I often had the girl, crying -«
    »You are an acquaintance, then, of Nelly's?«
    »The devil a bit. But I know woman is woman; and all the books in Kentucky
couldn't make Ellen Wade go into a tent alone with a ravenous beast!«
    »It seems to me,« the trapper calmly observed, »that there is something dark
and hidden in this matter. I am a witness that the traveller likes none to look
into the tent, and I have a proof more sure than what either of you can lay
claim to, that the wagon does not carry the cage of a beast. Here is Hector,
come of a breed with noses as true and faithful as a hand that is all-powerful
has made any of their kind, and had there been a beast in the place, the hound
would long since have told it to his master.«
    »Do you pretend to oppose a dog to a man! brutality to learning! instinct to
reason!« exclaimed the Doctor in some heat. »In what manner, pray, can a hound
distinguish the habits, species, or even the genus of an animal, like reasoning,
learned, scientific, triumphant man!«
    »In what manner!« coolly repeated the veteran woodsman. »Listen; and if you
believe that a schoolmaster can make a quicker wit than the Lord, you shall be
made to see how much you're mistaken. Do you not hear something move in the
brake? it has been cracking the twigs