e!" exclaimed Sneak, when he
had been in the stable a few moments.

"Who are you talking to?" asked Glenn.

"A venimirous Osage smutty-face!" said Sneak, stepping out of the
stable door backwards, and dragging an Indian after him by the ears.

"What is that?" demanded Glenn, staring at the singular object before
him. The question was by no means an unnatural one, for no being in
the human shape ever seemed less like a man. The unresisting and
bewildered savage looked wildly round, displaying a face as black as
if he had just risen from the bottom of some infernal lake. His
tattered buckskin garments had shared the same fate in the explosion;
his eyebrows, and the hair of his head were singed and crisped; and,
altogether he might easily have passed for one of Pluto's scullions.
He did not make resistance when Sneak led him forth, seeming to
anticipate nothing else than an instantaneous and cruel death, and was
apparently resigned to his fate. He doubtless imagined that escape and
longer life were utterly impossible, inasmuch as, to his
comprehension, he was in the grasp of evil spirits. If he had asked
himself _how_ he came thither, it could not have occurred to him that
any other means than the agency of a supernatural power threw him into
the hands of the foe.

"I thought I saw one of them plunging through the air over the
inclosure," said Boone, smiling.

"Hanged if I didn't think so too," said Joe, who had at length
returned to gaze at the captive, when he ascertained that he was
entirely meek and inoffensive.

"Have you got over your fright already?" asked Sneak.

"What fright?" demanded Joe, with affected surprise.

"Now, _can_ you say you weren't skeered?"

"Ha! ha! ha! I believe you really thought I _was_ frightened. Why, you
dunce, you! I only ran in to tell Miss Mary about it."

"Now go to bed. Don't speak to me agin to night," said Sneak,
indignantly.

"I'll go and get something to eat," said Joe, retreating into the
house.

"Tell Roughgrove to come here," said Boone, speaking to Joe.

"I will," said Joe, vanishing through the door.

When the old ferryman came out, Boone requested him (he being the most
familiar with the Osage language,) to ask the savage by what means he
was enabled to get inside of the inclosure. Roughgrove did his
bidding; and the Indian replied that the Great Spirit _threw_ him over
the palisade, because he once killed a friend of Boone's at the
cave-spring, and was now