fair to strangle him, at the first
false step of the horse; but the young Indians walked at his side,
chattering in high good humour; though, as their stock of English
extended only to the single phrase, "Bozhoo, brudder," which was not in
itself very comprehensible, though repeated at least twice every minute,
it may be supposed their conversation had no very enlivening effect on
the prisoner.

Nor was the old Piankeshaw much behind the juniors in good humour;
though, it must be confessed, his feelings were far more capricious and
evanescent. One while he would stop his horse, and dragging Roland to his
side, pat him affectionately on the shoulder, and tell him, as well as
his broken language could express his intentions, that he would take him
to the springs of the Wabash, one of the principal seats of his nation,
and make him his son and a great warrior; while at other times, having
indulged in a fit of sighing, groaning, and crying, he would turn in a
towering rage, and express a resolution to kill him on the spot,--from
which bloody disposition, however, he was always easily turned by the
interference of the young men.

These capricious changes were perhaps owing in a great measure to the
presence of the whisky-keg, which the old warrior ever and anon took from
its perch among the packs behind him, and applied to his lips, sorely, as
it appeared, against the will of his companion, who seemed to remonstrate
with him against a practice so unbecoming a warrior, while in the heart
of a foeman's country, and not a little also against his own sense of
propriety: for his whole course in relation to the keg was like that of a
fish that dallies around the angler's worm, uncertain whether to bite,
now looking and longing, now suspecting the hook and retreating, now
returning to look and long again, until, finally, unable to resist the
temptation, it resolves upon a little nibble, which ends, even against
its own will, in a furious bite.

It was in this manner the Piankeshaw addressed himself to his treasure;
the effect of which was to render each returning paroxysm of affection
and sorrow more energetic than before, while it gradually robbed of their
malignity those fits of anger with which he was still occasionally
seized. But it added double fluency to his tongue; and, not content with
muttering his griefs in his own language, addressing them to his own
people, he finally began to pronounce them in English, directing the