once, and was woke out of it by an arrow in my face. I
kep' on a long time after that, before I give out; but at last I got
the horrors, and thought the prairie was all a-fire, and run from it.
I don't know how long I run on in that mad state; I only know that the
horrors turned out to be the saving of my life. I missed my own trail,
and struck into another, which was a trail of friendly Indians--people
I'd traded with, you know. And I came up with 'em somehow, near enough
for the stragglers of their hunting party to hear me skreek when my
scalp was took. Now you know as much about it as I do; I can't tell you
no more, except that I woke up like, in an Indian wigwam, with a crop of
cool leaves on my head, instead of a crop of hair."

"A crop of leaves! What a jolly old Jack-in-the-Green you must have
looked like! Which of those scars on your face is the arrow-wound, eh?
Oh, that's it--is it? I say, old boy, you've got a black eye! Did any of
those fellows in the Snuggery hit hard enough to hurt you?"

"Hurt me? Chaps like them _hurt Me!!"_ Tickled by the extravagance of
the idea which Zack's question suggested to him, Mat shook his sturdy
shoulders, and indulged himself in a gruff chuckle, which seemed to
claim some sort of barbarous relationship with a laugh.

"Ah! of course they haven't hurt you;--I didn't think they had," said
Zack, whose pugilistic sympathies were deeply touched by the contempt
with which his new friend treated the bumps and bruises received in
the fight. "Go on, Mat, I like adventures of your sort. What did you do
after your head healed up?"

"Well, I got tired of dodging about the Amazon, and went south, and
learnt to throw a lasso, and took a turn at the wild horses. Galloping
did my head good."

"It's just what would do my head good too. Yours is the sort of life,
Mat, for me! How did you first come to lead it? Did you run away from
home?"

"No. I served aboard ship, where I was put out, being too idle a
vagabond to be kep' at home. I always wanted to run wild somewheres for
a change; but I didn't really go to do it, till I picked up a letter
which was waiting for me in port, at the Brazils. There was news in that
letter which sickened me of going home again; so I deserted, and went
off on the tramp. And I've been mostly on the tramp ever since, till I
got here last Sunday."

"What! have you only been in England since Sunday?"

"That's all. I made a good time of it in California, where