The trapper paused, and followed the departing wagon with his eye,
marvelling greatly as to the nature of its concealed contents, until
it had also gained the summit of the eminence, and in its turn
disappeared behind the swell of the land. Then he turned to gaze at
the desolation of the scene around him. The absence of human forms
would have scarce created a sensation in the bosom of one so long
accustomed to solitude, had not the site of the deserted camp
furnished such strong memorials of its recent visitors, and as the old
man was quick to detect, of their waste also. He cast his eye upwards,
with a shake of the head, at the vacant spot in the heavens which had
so lately been filled by the branches of those trees that now lay
stripped of their verdure, worthless and deserted logs, at his feet.
"Ay," he muttered to himself, "I might have know'd it--I might have
know'd it! Often have I seen the same before; and yet I brought them
to the spot myself, and have now sent them to the only neighbourhood
of their kind within many long leagues of the spot where I stand.
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