mimicry.
Then suddenly grave, he seized the Highlander's left arm, giving it an
earnest grasp about the wrist, the elbow, then close to the shoulder to
intimate that he spared him for his gift to the needy and helpless.

But Kenneth MacVintie, remembering his ill-starred generosity, flushed
to the eyebrows, so little it became his record as a soldier, he
thought, that he should be captured and stand in danger of his life by
reason of the unmilitary performance of feeding a babbling pappoose.

Attusah, however, could but love him for it; he loved the soldier for
his kind heart, he said. For great as he himself was, the Northward
Warrior, he had known how bitter it was to lack kindness.

"It is not happy to be an ada-wehi!" he confessed, "for those who
believe fear those who do not!"

And tearing open the throat of his bead-embroidered shirt to reveal the
frightful gashes of the wounds in his breast, he told the story of his
legal death, with tears in his gay eyes, and a tremor of grief in the
proud intonations of his voice, that thus had been requited a feat, the
just guerdon of which should have been the warrior's crown,--in the
bestowal of which, but for a cowardly fear of the English, all the tribe
would have concurred.

"_Akee-o-hoosa!_" (I am dead!) he said, pointing at the scars. And the
Highlander felt that death had obviously been in every stroke, and
hardly wondered that they who had seen the blows dealt should now
account the appearance of the man a spectral manifestation, his unquiet
ghost.

Then, Attusah's mood changing suddenly, "_Tsida-wei-yu!_" (I am a great
ada-wehi!) he boasted airily.

That he was truly possessed of magical powers seemed to MacVintie least
to be questioned when he angled, catching the great catfish, after the
manner of the Indians, with the open palm of his hand. In these fresh
June mornings he would dive down in some deep shady pool under the dark
ledges of rock where the catfish are wont to lurk, his right arm wrapped
to the fingers with a scarlet cloth. Tempted by the seeming bait, the
catfish would take the finger-tips deep in its gullet, the strong hand
would instantly clinch on its head, and Attusah would rise with his
struggling gleaming prey, to be broiled on the coals for breakfast.

But for these finny trophies they too might have suffered for food, in
the scarcity of game and the lack of powder; but thus well fed, the two
enemies, like comrades, would loiter beside t