o speak, which lay far beneath the surface. The character
of the Western frontiersman is often a singular accumulation of such
strata,--the training and beliefs of his earliest days overlain by
successions of unrelated and violent experiences, like geological
deposits. Underneath the exterior crust of the most hardened and
ruffianly nature often remains--its forms not yet quite fossilized--a
realm full of the devout customs, doctrines, religious influences, which
the boy knew, and the man remembers, By sudden upheaval, in some great
catastrophe or struggle in his mature life, these all come again into
the light. Assembly Catechism definitions, which he learned in his
childhood, and has not thought of since, ring in his ears, and he is
thrown into all manner of confusions and inconsistencies of feeling and
speech by this clashing of the old and new man within him. It was much
in this way that Aunt Ri's words smote upon young Merrill. He was not
many years removed from the sound of a preaching of the straitest New
England Calvinism. The wild frontier life had drawn him in and under, as
in a whirlpool; but he was New Englander yet at heart.

"That's so, Aunt Ri!" he exclaimed. "That's so! I don't s'pose a man
that's committed murder 'll ever have any peace in this world, nor in
the next nuther, without he repents; but ye see this horse-stealin'
business is different. 'Tain't murder to kill a hoss-thief, any way you
can fix it; everybody admits that. A feller that's caught horse-stealin'
had ought to be shot; and he will be, too, I tell you, in this country!"

A look of impatient despair spread over Aunt Ri's face. "I hain't no
patience left with yer," she said, "er talkin' abaout stealin' hosses ez
ef hosses wuz more'n human bein's! But lettin' thet all go, this Injun,
he wuz crazy. Yer all knowed it. Thet Farrar knowed it. D'yer think ef
he'd ben stealin' the hoss, he'd er left his own hoss in the corral,
same ez, yer might say, leavin' his kyerd to say 't wuz he done it; 'n'
the hoss er tied in plain sight 'n front uv his house fur ennybody ter
see?"

"Left his own horse, so he did!" retorted Merrill. "A poor, miserable,
knock-kneed old pony, that wa'n't worth twenty dollars; 'n' Jim's horse
was worth two hundred, 'n' cheap at that."

"Thet ain't nuther here nor thar in what we air sayin'," persisted Aunt
Ri. "I ain't a speakin' on 't ez a swap er hosses. What I say is, he
wa'n't tryin' to cover 't up thet he'd tuk th