aped a lightish, oily, brown dust,--burnt human flesh, in a
word,--proving that these skeletons belonged to criminals or prisoners
sacrificed at the death of the chief.

Abel Steadman kicked the bent skull and folded arms of one of them
aside.

"Even those savages made masters and slaves of each other," he said,
pettishly. "The costliest wampum made the chief then, as nowadays, I
suppose."

I remember I looked at him, thinking it an odd train of thought for a
carter's son.

I loitered away several weeks with the Steadmans, having induced the old
woman to take me as a boarder. The house was but a large hut, with a
wide kitchen below, and two lofts over it, in one of which the boys
slept, and in the other their mother and Cousin Jane, a young woman of
Abel's age. I had a bunk fitted up in a closet off the kitchen.
Perceiving that Abel took notes of our researches, making drawings with
me of the painted rocks, etc., I wondered to find a day-laborer with a
taste for such pursuits, unusual even among educated men. When our
supper of flitch and molasses was over one evening, therefore, I asked
him how he meant to use his papers. Abel ran his fingers through his
thin, red whiskers.

"Material for future work,--material," he said, vaguely staring into the
fire.

I saw that Mrs. Steadman, a thin, hollow-chested woman, looked up to
hear his answer, and Matt gave a keen glance round from his work. Matt
was a stout, clean-skinned lad, with a firm, decisive way of shutting
his lips, and a pair of shrewd, kindly blue eyes that I liked. He was
trying to be a carpenter without learning the trade: had put up a shed
outside, and was up by daylight every morning hewing away with his one
plane and saw. Boy-like, he had made a chum of me already. My question
had curiously disquieted Abel. He rose and left the room. Matt drew his
bench up.

"That hurt Abe, you see?"

"I do not see why."

"True for you. But" (in a whisper) "he can't help doin' them things; and
then, seein' they don't help, he worries like a girl."

"Help?"

"Yes,"--then was silent, his mouth harder set. "Well," (a rush of blood
dyeing his face,)--"look yonder" (jerking his head back) "at mother.
Don't you think it's time somethin' was done?"

I had noticed that the woman was raw-boned and stoop-shouldered, with
that etiolated yellow flesh that comes of long overwork. I might have
heard her cough, but had paid no attention to it until now, when a fit
came on