aster of the revels. With his wild Irish spirit aflame he
was in his element. A finer looking Bruin than he was when enveloped in
a great bearskin never came out of the woods, and certainly none more
active as he chased the youthful pioneers, who were screaming shrilly,
from one side of the hall to the other. As "Poor Puss" he struggled
frantically for a corner, failing, however, when a settler of the
advanced age of four, but mighty enterprising, made in swiftly between
his knees, gave him a tremendous fall, and gained the coveted goal.
"Mily, mily bright" was infinitely enlivened by the presence of the
recruits from the ball-room, and the romp became tumultuous when Hamish
undertook the _role_ of one of the witches that waited by the way to
intercept those--among whom was the corporal--who sought to get there by
"candle-light," and who were assured that they could do this if their
"legs were long enough." When he pursued the soldier and his juvenile
party from one side of the room to the other, winding and doubling and
almost tumbling into the fire, the delighted screams of the children
were as loud and shrill as if they were all being scalped, and caused
the sentries in the block-house towers to look in surprise and doubt in
that direction more than once, and finally brought Captain Stuart from
the officers' quarters to see for himself what was going on. As he stood
in the door with his imperious face, his bluff manner, his military
dress, and his great muscular height, the children, inspired by that
love of the incongruous which always characterizes childhood, swarmed
about him with the insistence that he should be blindfolded in
Blindman's Buff. And surely he proved the champion blind man of the
world! After one benighted stumbling rush half across the room, amidst a
storm of squealing ecstasy, he plunged among his pygmy enemies with such
startling success as to have caught two or three by the hair of their
heads with one hand, while with the other he was laying about him with
such discrimination that his craft became apparent. He was not playing
fair!--he could see!--he peeped! he peeped! and his laugh being much
resented, he was put to the door by his small enemies, who evidently
expected him to feel such repentance as he might experience if he were
to be court-martialed.

O'Flynn, watching him go off across the snowy shadowy parade, noticed
that he did not at once return to the open door of the great hall where