t was a sight for which full many a stern, hard eye that
saw it grew for the moment the brighter, if not the clearer; and Burl,
though he made a manful effort to keep it back, was forced to yield the
point and let it come--the one big sob of tender and grateful feeling,
which, sending a quiver through his huge frame, made his martial rigging
shake and jingle like the harness of a whinnying war-horse.

The hunters now gathered round the hero of the day and called upon him
for an account of his adventures since parting with them at the forks of
the river the day before. He told his story modestly and briefly enough,
being well aware that there were those among his listeners far more
learned in wood-craft than himself, and more skilled in the arts and
stratagems of Indian warfare. Too magnanimous was he, though, to pass so
briefly over the part his prisoner had played in the matter, dwelling at
some length on the gentleness and humanity with which the young Indian
had treated his little master. When he had ended, the white hunters, one
and all, came up to him and shook him heartily by the hand, pronouncing
him an Indian-fighter of the true grit--a compliment, in the Fighting
Nigger's estimation, the highest that could be paid to mortal man,
black, yellow, or white. Then, going up to the young Indian, who,
leaning on his rifles, had stood the while with his bright eyes fixed
serenely on some invisible quarter of the evening, they, one and all,
shook him, likewise, as heartily by the hand--a dumb but eloquent
expression of their grateful sense of the humanity he had shown their
little friend in his hour of helpless peril and piteous need. The young
brave received the demonstration with dignified composure; not, though,
as if he had expected it, for, at the first greeting, he did lose his
self-possessed reserve so far as to betray a little sign of great
surprise.

While our big black hero was narrating their adventures to the hunters
without, our little white hero was giving his version of the same to his
mother within--a medley of facts and fancies, where it was about nip and
tuck between his old black chum and his young red friend as to which
might claim the greater share of the juvenile gratitude and admiration.
Being gently reproved by his mother for his naughty behavior, which had
been the cause of so much trouble and distress to them all, the young
transgressor, for the first time in his life without the help of a
swit