used upon myself, too! I supposed, when you asked
me to come out into the bush, that you had everything a gentleman ought
to have for such a purpose."

"Well, I never seed the like of that!" exclaimed he, striking the
ground with the butt end of his piece. "If we don't stand at four guns'
length--"

"We 'll do no such thing, friend," said I, shouldering my piece, and
advancing towards him. "I never meant to offend _you_; nor have you any
object in wounding, mayhap killing, _me_. Let me have something to eat;
I 'll pay for it freely, and go my ways."

"What on airth is it, eh?" said he, looking puzzled. "Why, that's one of
Colt's rifles! you'd have picked me down at two hundred yards, sure as
my name is Gabriel."

"I know it," said I, coolly; "and how much the better or the happier
should I have been, had I done so?" I watched the fellow's pasty
countenance as though I could read what passed in the muddy bottom of
his mind.

"If it were not for something of this kind," added I, sorrowfully, "I
should not be here to-day. You know New Orleans?" He nodded. "Well,
perhaps you know Ebenezer York?"

"The senator?"

"The same!" I made the pantomime of presenting a pistol, and then of a
man falling. "Just so. His brothers have taken up the pursuit, and so I
came down into this quarter till the smoke cleared off!"

"He was a plumper at a hundred and twenty yards. I seen him double up
Gideon Millis, of Ohio."

"Ah, I could recount many a thing of the kind to you," said I, leading
the way towards the hut, "but my throat is so dry, and I feel so
confoundedly weary just now--"

"That's cider," said he, pointing to the crock.

I did n't wait for a more formal invitation, but carried it to my lips,
and so held it for full a couple of minutes.

"Ye _wor_ drouthy,--that's a fact!" said he, peering into the low
watermark of the vessel.

"You hav'n't got any more bread?" said I, appropriating his own.

"If I had n't, ye 'd not have got that so easy, lad!" said he, with a
grin.

"And now for my mare; you see she's a good one--"

"Good as if she belonged to a richer master!" said he, with a peculiar
leer of the eye. "I know her well! knowed her a foal! Ah, Charry, Miss!
do you forget the way to take off your saddle with your teeth?" and he
patted the creature with a nearer approach to kindness than I believed
he was capable of.

I will not dwell upon the little arts I employed to conciliate my friend
Gabriel, nor stop