, exerting his strength in return,
and with an effect that no one had anticipated. By magic, as it seemed,
the heels of the captain of the horse-thieves were suddenly seen flying
in the air, his head aiming at the earth, upon which it as suddenly
descended with the violence of a bomb-shell; and there it would doubtless
have burrowed, like the aforesaid implement of destruction, had the soil
been soft enough for the purpose, or exploded into a thousand fragments,
had not the shell been double the thickness of an ordinary skull.

"Huzza! Bloody Nathan for ever!" shouted the delighted villagers.

"He has killed the man," said Forrester; "but bear witness, all, the
fellow provoked his fate."

"Thanks to you, strannger! but not so dead as you reckon," said Ralph,
rising to his feet, and scratching his poll, with a stare of comical
confusion. "I say, strannger, here's my shoulders,--but whar's my
head?--Do you reckon I had the worst of it?"

"Huzza for Nathan Slaughter! He has whipped the ramping tiger of Salt
River!" cried the young men of the Station.

"Well, I reckon he has," said the magnanimous Captain Ralph, picking
up his hat: then walking up to Nathan, who had taken his dog into his
arms, to examine into the little animal's hurts, he cried, with much
good-humoured energy,--"Thar's my fo'paw, in token I've had enough of you
and want no mo'. But I say, Nathan Slaughter," he added, as he grasped
the victor's hand, "it's no thing you can boast of, to be the strongest
man in Kentucky, and the most sevagarous at a tussel,--h'yar among
murdering Injuns and scalping runnegades,--and keep your fists off their
top-knots. Thar's my idear: for I go for the doctrine that every
able-bodied man should sarve his country and his neighbours, and fight
their foes; and them that does is men and gentlemen, and them that don't
is cowards and rascals, that's my idear. And so, fawwell."

Then, executing another demivolte or two, but with much less spirit than
he had previously displayed, he returned to Colonel Bruce, saying,
"Whar's that horse you promised me, cunnel? I'm a licked man, and I can't
stay here no longer, no way no how. Lend me a hoss, cunnel, and trust to
my honour."

"You shall have a beast," said Bruce, coolly; "but as to trusting your
honour, I shall do no such thing, having something much better to rely
on. Tom will show you a horse; and, remember, you are to leave him at
Logan's. If you carry him a step further, cap