the captain of horse-thieves,
Soaring Ralph Stackpole.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The amazement of Stackpole at finding to whom he owed his deliverance,
was not less than that of the travellers; but it was mingled, in his
case, with feelings of the most unbounded and clamorous delight. Nathan
he grasped by the hands, being the first upon whom he set his eyes; but
no sooner had they wandered to the soldier, than throwing his arms around
him, he gave him a hug, neither tender nor respectful, but indicative of
the intensest affection and rapture.

"You cut the rope, stranger, and you cut the tug," he cried, "on madam's
beseeching! but h'yar's the time you holped me out of a fix without
axing! Now, strannger, I ar'n't your dog, 'cause how, I'm anngelliferous
madam's: but if I ar'n't your dog, I'm your man, Ralph Stackpole, to be
your true-blue through time and etarnity, any way you'll ax me; and if
you wants a sodger, I'll 'list with you, I will, 'tarnal death to me!"

"But how, in heaven's name, came you here a prisoner? I saw you escape
with my own eyes," said Roland, better pleased, perhaps, at the accession
of such a stout auxiliary than with his mode of professing love and
devotion.

"Strannger," said Ralph, "if you war to ax me from now till doomsday
about the why and the wharfo' I couldn't make you more nor one answer: I
come to holp anngelliferous madam out of the hands of the abbregynes,
according to my sworn duty as her natteral-born slave and redemptioner! I
war hard on the track, when the villians here caught me."

"What!" cried Roland, his heart for the first time warming towards the
despised horse-thief, while even Nathan surveyed him with something like
complacency, "you are following my poor cousin then? You were not brought
here a prisoner?"

"If I war, I wish I may be shot," said Ralph: "it warn't a mile back on
the ridge, whar the Injuns snapped me; 'causa how, I jist bang'd away at
a deer, and jist then up jumps the rascals on me, afo' I had loaded old
speechifier; and so they nabb'd me! And so, sodger, h'yar's the way of it
all: You see, d'you see, as soon as Tom Bruce comes to, so as to
be able to hold the hoss himself--"

"What," said Roland, "was he not mortally wounded?"

"He ar'n't much hurt to speak on, for all of his looking so much like
coffin-meat at the first jump: it war a kind of narvousness come over him
that men feels when they gets the thwack of a bullet among the narves.
And so,