yesterday, but
it amazed me that the savages should come scouting into the Tidewater
itself. He smiled grimly when I said this, and took from his pocket a
crumpled feather.

"That's a Cherokee badge," he said. "I found that a fortnight back on
the river-side an hour's ride out of James Town. And it wasna there
when I had passed the same place the day before. The Tidewater thinks
it has put the fear of God on the hill tribes, and here's a red
Cherokee snowking about its back doors."

The last day he took me north up a stream called the North Fork, which
joined with his own river. I had left my musket behind, for this heavy
travel made me crave to go light, and I had no use for it. But that day
it seemed we were to go hunting.

He carried an old gun, and slew with it a deer in a marshy hollow--a
pretty shot, for the animal was ill-placed. We broiled a steak for our
midday meal, and presently clambered up a high woody ridge which looked
down on a stream and a piece of green meadow.

Suddenly he stopped. "A buck," he whispered. "See what you can do, you
that were so ready with your pistol." And he thrust his gun into my
hand.

The beast was some thirty paces off in the dusk of the thicket. It
nettled me to have to shoot with a strange weapon, and I thought too
lightly of the mark. I fired, and the bullet whistled over its back. He
laughed scornfully.

I handed it back to him. "It throws high, and you did not warn me. Load
quick, and I'll try again."

I heard the deer crashing through the hill-side thicket, and guessed
that presently it would come out in the meadow. I was right, and before
the gun was in my hands again the beast was over the stream.

It was a long range and a difficult mark, but I had to take the risk,
for I was on my trial. I allowed for the throw of the musket and the
steepness of the hill, and pulled the trigger. The shot might have been
better, for I had aimed for the shoulder, and hit the neck. The buck
leaped into the air, ran three yards, and toppled over. By the grace of
God, I had found the single chance in a hundred.

Frew looked at me with sincere respect. "That's braw shooting," he
said. "I can't say I ever saw its equal."

That night in the smoky cabin he talked freely for once. "I never had a
wife or bairn, and I lean on no man. I can fend for myself, and cook my
dinner, and mend my coat when it's wanting it. When Bacon died I saw
what was coming to this land, and I came here to aw