“It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, young one,” he said, looking down reassuringly on Dol, who was feeling dumfounded. “I guess you all think I’m an awful bearish fellow. But if you had lived the lonely life of a trapper, tramping each day through the dark woods till you were leg-weary, visiting your steel traps and deadfalls, all to get a few furs and make a few dollars; and turned up at camp one evening to find that your partner had skipped with every skin you had procured, I reckon ’twould take you a plaguy long time to get over it.”