and clattering into the riffle.
When the stream had washed them clean down to their red sunburn or their
leathern tan, they could paint up again and have more Indian fights.

I do not know why my boy's associations with Delorac's Island were
especially wild in their character, for nothing more like outlawry than
the game of mumble-the-peg ever occurred there. Perhaps it was because
the boys had to get to it by water that it seemed beyond the bounds of
civilization. They might have reached it by the bridge, but the temper
of the boys on the western shore was uncertain; they would have had to
run the gauntlet of their river-guard on the way up to it; and they
might have been friendly or they might not; it would have depended a
good deal on the size and number of the interlopers. Besides, it was
more glorious to wade across to the island from their side of the river.
They undressed and gathered their clothes up into a bundle, which they
put on their heads and held there with one hand, while they used the
other for swimming, when they came to a place beyond their depth. Then
they dressed again, and stretched themselves under the cottonwood-trees
and sycamores, and played games and told stories, and longed for a gun
to kill the blackbirds which nested in the high tops, and at nightfall
made such a clamor in getting to roost that it almost deafened you.

My boy never distinctly knew what formed that island, but as there was a
mill there, it must have been made by the mill-race leaving and
rejoining the river. It was enough for him to know that the island was
there, and that a parrot--a screaming, whistling, and laughing parrot,
which was a Pretty Poll, and always Wanted a Cracker--dwelt in a pretty
cottage, almost hidden in trees, just below the end of the island. This
parrot had the old Creole gentleman living with it who owned the island,
and whom it had brought from New Orleans. The boys met him now and then
as he walked abroad, with a stick, and his large stomach bowed in front
of him. For no reason under the sun they were afraid of him; perhaps
they thought he resented their parleys with the parrot. But he and the
parrot existed solely to amuse and to frighten them; and on their own
side of the river, just opposite the island, there were established some
small industries for their entertainment and advantage, on a branch of
the Hydraulic. I do not know just what it was they did with a
mustard-mill that was there, but the