tain, you'll never carry
another. Judge Lynch is looking at you; and so bewar'."

Having uttered this hint, he left the captian of horse-thieves to digest
it as he might, and stepped up to Nathan, who had seated himself on a
stump, where, with his skins at his side, his little dog and his rifle
betwixt his legs, he sat enduring a thousand sarcastic encomiums on his
strength and spirit, with as many sharp denunciations of the peaceful
principles that robbed the community of the services he had shown himself
so well able to render. The doctrine, so eloquently avowed by Captain
Ralph, that it was incumbent upon every able-bodied man to fight the
enemies of their little state, the murderers of their wives and children,
was a canon of belief imprinted on the heart of every man in the
district; and Nathan's failure to do so, however caused by his
conscientious aversion to bloodshed, no more excused him from contempt
and persecution in the wilderness, than it did others of his persuasion
in the Eastern republics, during the war of the revolution. His
appearance, accordingly, at any Station, was usually the signal for
reproach and abuse; the fear of which had driven him almost altogether
from the society of his fellowmen, so that he was seldom seen among them,
except when impelled by necessity, or when his wanderings in the woods
had acquainted him with the proximity of the foes of his persecutors. His
victory over the captain of horse-thieves exposed him, on this occasion,
to ruder and angrier remonstrances than usual; which having sought in
vain to avert, he sat down in despair, enduring all in silence, staring
from one to another of his tormentors with lack-lustre eyes, and playing
with the silken hair of his dog. The approach of the captain of the
Station procured him an interval of peace, which he, however, employed
only to communicate his troubles to the little cur, that, in his
perplexity, he had addressed pretty much as he would have addressed a
human friend and adviser: "Well, Peter," said he, abstractedly, and with
a heavy sigh, "what does _thee_ think of matters and things!" To which
question, the ridiculousness of which somewhat mollified the anger of the
young men, Peter replied by rubbing his nose against his master's hand,
and by walking a step or two down the hill, as if advising an instant
retreat from the inhospitable Station.

"Ay, Peter," muttered Nathan, "the sooner we go the better; for there are
none tha