borderer.
"Let us cross fingers. You and I will never quarrel about the comb,
since you set so little store by the honey. And now, if your stomach has
an empty corner, and you know how to relish a genuine dew-drop when it
falls into your very mouth, there lies the exact morsel to put into it.
Try it, stranger; and having tried it, if you don't call it as snug
a fit as you have made since--How long ar' you from the settlements,
pray?"

"'Tis many weeks, and I fear it may be as many more before I can return.
I will, however, gladly profit by your invitation, for I have fasted
since the rising of yesterday's sun, and I know too well the merits of a
bison's bump to reject the food."

"Ah! you ar' acquainted with the dish! Well, therein you have the
advantage of me, in setting out, though I think I may say we could now
start on equal ground. I should be the happiest fellow between Kentucky
and the Rocky Mountains, if I had a snug cabin, near some old wood that
was filled with hollow trees, just such a hump every day as that for
dinner, a load of fresh straw for hives, and little El--"

"Little what?" demanded the stranger, evidently amused with the
communicative and frank disposition of the bee-hunter.

"Something that I shall have one day, and which concerns nobody so much
as myself," returned Paul, picking the flint of his rifle, and beginning
very cavalierly to whistle an air well known on the waters of the
Mississippi.

During this preliminary discourse the stranger had taken his seat by the
side of the hump, and was already making a serious inroad on its relics.
Dr. Battius, however, watched his movements with a jealousy, still more
striking than the cordial reception which the open-hearted Paul had just
exhibited.

But the doubts, or rather apprehensions, of the naturalist were of a
character altogether different from the confidence of the bee-hunter. He
had been struck with the stranger's using the legitimate, instead of the
perverted name of the animal off which he was making his repast; and as
he had been among the foremost himself to profit by the removal of
the impediments which the policy of Spain had placed in the way of all
explorers of her trans-Atlantic dominions, whether bent on the purposes
of commerce, or, like himself, on the more laudable pursuits of science,
he had a sufficiency of every-day philosophy to feel that the
same motives, which had so powerfully urged himself to his present
undertaki