e you knows where you are,
his heels are in your jaw. Once he blazes out, it's knife or gun,
hatchet or hickory--any thing he can lay hands on. He's killed two men
already, and cut another's throat a'most to killing. He's an ugly chap
to meet on the road, so look out right and left."

"What sort of man is he?"

"In looks?"

"Yes!"

"Well, I reckon, he's about your heft. He's young and tallish, with a
fair skin, brown hair, and a mighty quick keen blue eye, that never
looks steadily nowhere. Look sharp for him. The sheriff with his
'spose-you-come-and-take-us'--is out after him, but he's mighty cute to
dodge, and had the start some twelve hours afore they missed him."

CHAPTER II

The information thus received did not disquiet me. After the momentary
reflection that it might be awkward to meet a madman, out of bounds,
upon the highway, I quickly dismissed the matter from my mind. I had
no room for any but pleasant meditations. The fair Susannah was now
uppermost in my dreaming fancies, and, reversing the grasp upon my
whip, the ivory handle of which, lined with an ounce or two of lead,
seemed to me a sufficiently effective weapon for the worst of dangers,
I bade my friendly blacksmith farewell, and dashed forward upon the
high road. A smart canter soon took me out of the settlement, and,
once in the woods, I recommended myself with all the happy facility of
youth, to its most pleasant and beguiling imaginings. I suppose I had
ridden a mile or more--the story of the bedlamite was gone utterly from
my thought--when a sudden turn in the road showed me a person, also
mounted, and coming towards me at an easy trot, some twenty-five or
thirty yards distant. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance.
He was a plain farmer or woodman, clothed in ample homespun, and riding
a short heavy chunk of an animal, that had just been taken from the
plough. The rider was a spare, long-legged person, probably thirty
years or thereabouts. He looked innocent enough, wearing that simple,
open-mouthed sort of countenance, the owner of which, we assume, at a
glance, will never set any neighbouring stream on fire. He belonged
evidently to a class as humble as he was simple,--but I had been
brought up in a school which taught me that the claims of poverty were
quite as urgent upon courtesy as those of wealth. Accordingly, as we
neared each other, I prepared to bestow upon him the usual civil
recognition of the highwa