"The more it is worth, the better it will be for you, Kit," I replied.

"I'm willin' to pay for the place and the improvements. I've made well
on it this year--more'n ever I could trappin'. Then, you see, the
settlements is workin' up this way, and another year I shall hev 'em
all round me."

"All right; hope you'll make your fortune, Kit."

"But I want to buy you out."

"I don't think I have any rights here which I can sell. You are welcome
to everything that belongs to me. But I will leave the whole matter to
Mr. Gracewood. I know he will do what is fair."

"Just as you say, Phil. This life jest suits me, now I'm gittin' old,
and don't want to tramp through the woods no more. It's a good
sitooation for me, and I shall be lucky to get it at any fair price. I
shan't want it long, and when I've done with it, yon kin hev it agin,
for I hain't no relations to fight over what I leave behind me."

"How long have you lived in the woods, Kit?" I asked; for, though I had
known him from my childhood, I had no knowledge of his antecedents.

"Nigh on to thirty years, boy."

"Where did you come from?"

"I was born and raised down in Kaintuck. My father died when I was
young, and I took to the river for a livin'. I worked a choppin', a
flat boatin', and firin' on a steamboat. I was down in Loosiana one
time, on a plantation, when the owner's cub--and he war wus nor any
bar's cub I ever see--tied up a black woman who had been sick, because
she didn't do all her stent. He wanted me to lick her. I told him I
wouldn't do it, no how. This made him mad, and he struck me. I knocked
him down with my fist quicker'n you could wink. He got up, and kim at
me with a knife. I hit him with a heavy stick on the head. He dropped,
and didn't move no more."

"Did yon kill him?" I asked, deeply interested in the narrative.

"I dunno; I don't reckon I did. But I feared I hed; but whether I hed
or not, it would have been all the same with me. It mought have cost me
my life if they'd cotched me, and I left. I travelled across the
country till I came to the Ark'saw River, and thar I went to work agin
firin' on a steamer. When I got money enough I bought my rifle, and
traps, and went into the woods. I hev tramped all over the pararies,
and in the end I fotched up here."

"Have you always lived alone?"

"Allus; I hedn't no 'fection for them pesky half breeds, nor them
French Kanucks nuther. They are thick enough all along the river, and I
al