r little
Fanny, who ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder, and
begged to go to her mother. The old woman puffed away at her pipe,
fixing her gaze upon the children.

"Got a mother, hey?" said she.

"Yes."

"And a father?"

"Yes."

"Um-m-m."

She puffed and gazed.

"You wouldn't like to see 'em shot?"

At this Benny stood speechless, and Fanny set up such a cry to go home
that Benny was afraid he should have to take her away--that is, if the
Witch would let him. He began to consider his chances. Still the more
terrible the old Witch seemed, the more Benny wanted to see and hear
her. He whispered to Fanny:

"_She_ won't hurt you, Pettikins--she _can't_; I won't let her. Hush a
minute, and see what I'm going to say to her!"

Fanny hushed a little, and Benny fixed an audacious gaze upon the
Witch--or a gaze which he meant should be audacious. "What _is_ the
matter with you?" said he.

The old woman removed her pipe and sat holding it with her forefinger
lapped over it like a hook.

"They call it 'exterminated,'" said she, pushing back the broad-brimmed,
high-crowned man's hat that she wore, and showing her gray, ragged
locks. "I'm exterminated. You don't know what that is, I s'pose?"

"Exterminated, ex-_ter_-min-ated," said Benny, scratching his head,
"why, to--to--drive out--to--ah--put an end to--to--to--destroy
utterly."

"I don't know what your book meaning is. I didn't get mine from books. I
got it all the way along--began to get it when I wasn't much bigger'n
that little gell," said the Witch, pointing at Fanny with her pipe. "I
didn't know what it meant when I first heard it, but I know now.
Hoo-oo-oo-oo!"

"I wish you'd tell us about it," said Benny. "Tell us about beginning to
learn it when you wa'n't much bigger'n Pettikins."

"That's when the colonel said we must move west'ard," said the witch,
laying her pipe down on the log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and
resting her bony jaws in the palms of her hands. "Injuns, before they're
exterminated, stick to their homes like other folks."

[Illustration: THEY ENCOUNTER THE WITCH.]

"You ain't an _Injun_, be you!" gasped Benny, with a look and tone which
expressed volumes of consternation and disappointment at her utter
failure to come up to his ideal Indian. Why, she wasn't the least bit
like the pictures! She wasn't like the magnificent figures he had seen
in front of the cigar stores in New Haven. Where were all her feather