University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE HUNTER'S YARN.

Mazeppa.

The room, into which our sporting friends were introduced
by Dutch Jake, himself, was a long and narrow
apartment occupying the whole breadth, and one-third
of the length of the whole house. It was lighted by
day by six small windows, three on each side, and by
two narrow glass-doors, that through which our sportsmen
had gained admittance, and a second directly
opposite to it; and by night, as in the present instance,
by half a dozen sconces, with marvellously dirty
tin reflectors, attached to the wall, each containing one
large home-made tallow candle. Had this been all the
illumination, however, of the long, dingy, low-ceiled
room, it would have barely sufficed to make the darkness
visible; but, as it was, a huge pile of hickory logs, blazing
and snapping in a vast open fire-place, sending broad

sheets of flame up the wide-throated chimney, and great
volumes of smoke, at intervals, into the room, diffused
both warmth and lustre through the place.

At the right hand of the door by which they entered,
was the bar itself, with a narrow, semicircular counter,
protected by stout wooden bars, and a sliding-door.
The shelves of this sanctum were garnished with sundry
kegs of liquor, painted bright green, and labelled
with the names of the contents, in black characters on
gilded serolls. These, with two or three dull-looking
decanters of snakeroot-whiskey, and other kinds of
“bitters;” a dozen heavy-bottomed tumblers, resembling
in shape the half of an hour-glass, set up on the
small end; a wooden box of whity-brown crushed sugar,
which professed to be white, and a considerable array
of tobacco-pipes, constituted all the furniture of Jake's
bar, and promised but little, as Tom Draw had forewarned
his young associates, for the drinkableness of
the Dutchman's drinkables.

Unpalatable, however, as they appeared, and as they
would probably have turned out on a trial, to the refined
tastes of our sporting epicures, it seemed that they
were looked upon in a very different light by the assembled
magnates of the neighbourhood, who, in great
numbers, and great glee, came thronging towards the
door to gape at the new-comers.

They had just ceased from a regular breakdown
Dutch dance, which they had been plying most uproariously

and most industriously to the obstreperous braying
of a fiddle, worked by a fifty-horse-power coal-black
white-headed negro, assisted by a shrill squeaking flute
and a jingling tambourine, shrieked on and hammered,
with proportionate energies by his sons, as it was easy
to perceive by their precise similarity in hue and feature
with the old fiddler.

All the three, despite the difference of hue and race,
appeared to be on the best and most intimate footing
with all present; and the whole crowd, seeing that the
new-comers were neither friends nor acquaintances,
crowded to the bar, and took advantage of the temporary
cessation of the breakdown, to liquor on the largest
scale and in the most promiscuous fashion, men and girls,
black and white, altogether.

“Hallo! Jake!” exclaimed Fat Tom, as he entered,
affecting to stare about as if he could hardly see, “what
in creation makes it so all-fired dark in here? why, I
carn't see my way to the bar, if so be there be one.”

“Vell, Mishter Traw,” responded the old Dutchman,
“I ton't see tat it pe so tark—put to teyfil! it most pete
shmokes, for de tamn'd chimbly”—

“No! no! it arn't, Jake,” interrupted Tom, “it arn't
the smoke nor the chimney, nohow. I'll nose it out
torights, I tell you. It's the darned niggers, I guess.
It's the niggers, sartin! why, there's enough on 'em to
make the moonshine dark!”

This most characteristic speech on the part of the

jolly publican, called forth a burst of good-humoured
and resounding laughter from the black portion of the
company, the blackest of whom are wont in mirthful or
angry objurgation to vituperate one another as “brack
niggas;” but it was by no means so complacently received
by the white company, many of the younger members
of which were aware that out of the Dutch settlements
it is looked on as a reproach to hold the slightest
intercourse in hours of relaxation with the free negro,
much more to eat at the same board, or drink in company
with him; and several of these were not a little
disposed to resent the bold jest of the bluff speaker.

Little cared jolly Tom for that, however; but seeing
the bended brows and lowering looks of some of the
gigantic Dutchmen, he would in all probability have
proceeded in a strain yet more offensive, and would very
likely have produced a general row, if Harry, who
entered the room a moment after him, had not interposed
promptly and effectively to preserve the peace.

“The poor old man's very drunk, gentlemen,” he
said, with his frank and cheery smile; “a thing. I'm
sorry to say, that happens to him very often; but he's
mad now into the bargain, which I don't wonder at, for
he wanted to kiss a very nice young wench as we came
along, and she wouldn't have him on any terms!”

“Kiss the dev—” Tom began to reply, furiously
indignant, but he was interrupted by about a dozen
voices, eager and loud in inquiry into particulars; for so

seriously had Harry spoken, that half the young men
believed him to be in earnest.

“Do tell,” said one; “where was't?”

“I ton't know of no naice yong venches on de roat
to York,” cried another.

“I cannot exactly tell you, gentlemen,” replied Harry,
still preserving his gravity admirably; “as I am not
well acquainted with your country, or with the names
of places. But I think I can describe it to you. You
all know the old beaver-dam, I fancy, and the bridge;
well, just beyond that there's a big hill; and, beyond
that again, a deep wet swamp; and across that a mountain,
with a toll-gate on the far side—”

“Yes, yes—I know—I know ferry vell. Dat's
Hans Schneider's dole-gate. Vell! dere's no yong vench
dere!”

“No, no—not there—but in a little hovel about two-thirds
up the mountain. The road was so steep that I
made the fat man get out and walk up, and just as he
got opposite the door, she came out with a tin pail to
fetch some water, and he tried—”

“Mein Got! It's old Shuno dat he meansh; old
Tave's fraw!”

“Tousand teyfils! She pe olter nor a huntert year.”

“Ant oglier as de ferry Olt Nick!”

“Tid he, py Cot! vant to kish olt Shuno? Donder
ant teyfil! vat a peasht!”

“Ant she voultn't haf him no vays. By Got! I

ton't vonter as he pe mat mit de colour peoples, arter
tat.”

What were Fat Tom's emotions, at this strange invention
of Harry's, it would be difficult to say; for in the
first instance his face turned as red as fire, and his eyes
gleamed angrily from beneath the overhanging pent-house
of his heavy gray eyebrows; but at the numerous
wondering expressions of the credulous and astonished
Dutchmen, at the abhorrent and disgusted looks of the
girls, many of whom were very young and plump and
pretty, and above all at the intense delight of the negroes,
who stamped, and yelled with laughter, and
positively rolled on the floor in their mad glee, the old
man's face relaxed. A joke was always too much for
him, even if it were, as in the present instance, at his
own expense.

“Well, well,” he said, “boys, t'aint jist right to
tell tales on the party. See if I beant quits with you
afore long! But so be you has told, I don't see but
I've got to stand treats for the company. Jake, you
darned old cuss, look alive, carn't you? and make a
gallon of hot Dutch rum, torights; and if that ar'n't
enough for all hands, make two. If I carn't kiss
wenches, I'd be pleased to see if some of these all-fired
pretty white gals won't be a-kissin' me, afore the
night's done, anyhow.”

“I von't den, anyhow, for fon!” said a very pretty
little blue-eyed girl, with a profusion of long light brown

curls, who had been listening with her bright eyes distended
to their utmost.

“For fun!” exclaimed Fat Tom, intentionally misunderstanding
her meaning, and making at her with a
moment's hesitation. “By the Etarnal! 'tarn't for fun
I kisses, I'd have you to know—it's in right down most
all-fired airnest.”

“No, no, old man!” interposed Harry, stepping
between Tom and the girl. “Don't be afraid, my
pretty lassie, he shall not touch you, he's too old altogether
for such a pretty girl as you.”

“Ant ferry moche too ogly!” answered the girl,
laughing joyously.

“Here's metal more attractive, perhaps,” said Harry,
seizing Frank Forester, and dragging him forward as
he spoke.

“No, no. He mosen't mettle mit me neider,” said
the girl, still laughing. “I'd all as fon pe a kissing te
old cat, mit all tat nashty hair on his lip, shost as pad,
mine Got, nor fon olt racoon!”

A fresh burst of laughter, from the whole room, now
followed this peculiarly acceptable repartee, in allusion
to the thick yellow moustache which covered the whole
of Frank's upper lip; and under cover of the laugh,
Harry snatched a hearty kiss from the laughing lips of
the little coquette, saying, as he did so—

“It's hard if one of the lot won't suit you!”

“It ain't you den, mit your imputence,” she answered,

blushing a good deal, and fetching him a crack on the
side of the head, which made his cheek tingle, and his
ear burn for half an hour. “Kiss me again, den, von't
you?”

“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Harry, nothing
daunted—and suiting the action to the word, he caught
her in his arms, and bestowed upon her, not one, but
half a dozen long and sonorous busses; which, as he
afterward asseverated, though she affected to struggle
and resist with all her might, she returned with good
interest.

Most of the company laughed loudly at this interlude,
which seemed to pass as a matter of course; but one rawboned
young Dutchman, who had been dancing with the
girl half the evening, began to look something more than
minacious, when the Dutch rum made its appearance,
and the rich, spicy odour dissipated in a twinkling his
fast-rising choler.

The strange compound of Santa Cruz rum, boiling
water, allspice, brown sugar, pepper-corns, and—start not,
gentle reader, when I add—butter, passed around with
clattering of glasses, gurgling imbibition, and loud laughter,
under cover of which our friends stole away, by a
door close to the fireplace, leaving the rustic ball to recommence
with new din and spirit, after an interruption
which had turned out so acceptable to all parties present.

“Now, Jake,” said Harry to the landlord, who had
ushered them into a sort of sanctum, in a projecting wing

of the old stone tavern, which had a separate communication
with the rest of the house—“you can get
us something to eat, I suppose; we have not had a
mouthful since one o'clock, and are half dead with hunger.
You got my letter, I suppose, to tell you we would
be here to-night?”

“Sartin,” replied old Jake. I cot it yeshtertay.
Mein Cot! yesh. I can kive you fresh eggs and ham,
and de shmoke peet, petter as nothink!”

“Well, look you here, we have brought up some cold
meat with us. Do you have some potatoes roasted in
the ashes, and let us have some of your best butter, and
brown bread, and let my man Timothy do whatever he
wants to do in the kitchen. Send a couple of your boys
to take care of the horses; and let another run over to
Dolph Pierson's, and tell him we are here, and want
him to come up to supper.”

“Tolph vas here not an hour since, ant I dolt him as
you vas a comin'; ant he'll pe here mitout my sendin de
poy. Vell! I'll ko stret avay, ant pid de women volks
purn de potatoes, ant sent de pooter ant de preat, ant
make de hot vater for de poonch—you'll pe a vantin
poonch—anyting elshe, Mishter Archur?”

“Yes! have you got any ice?”

“A plenties!”

“Send in a good big tub full of it, broken small. Do
that first—will you, Jake?”

“I fill,” answered the old man, “and see, here cooms

de man Dimoty. You tell him vat you'll pe a vanting,
ant fe'll pe a doing it raight any vays.”

And as he spoke he left the room—while the little
Yorkshireman entered it from the offices, clean-rigged,
and washed already, and followed by two negroes, carrying,
the one a couple of champagne baskets, and the
other a large and apparently heavy chest of live-oak
board with iron at the corners. Timothy himself bore
a smaller case of Russia leather, which he deposited on
a side table, the negroes arranging their burthens on
either side the fire-place.

“Noo, bring t' goon caases in,” said Timothy, “and
t' little leather troonk wi t' shot and t' powther,” and
then turning to Harry, he continued—“T' horses is
sorted doon bonnily, and all four on 'em are tooking into
t' oats laike bricks, Measter Aircher. You'll be a wantin'
soopper noo, ay reckon, at least, ay sure mysen,
ay's varra hoongry.”

“So are we, Timothy; and I trust you have something
eatable in the travelling-case; for there is nothing
to be got here but bread and butter.”

“Ay've got twa brace o' t' cauld larded partridges—
a brace o' t' soommer dooks ready for broiling—a cauld
ham simmered i' champagne—and a goose-paie, 'at ay
maad mysen, fit for t' Queen, God bless her!”

“Excellent well, indeed, Timothy. You are a caterer
worth a thousand. Ah! here comes the ice. Now
look sharp, get out four bottles of champagne, and stick

them into that tub. We'll keep the wood-duck and
the goose-pie for to-morrow. We'll have a brace
of the larded grouse, and the ham to-night. You go
and see to the roasting of the potatoes, and make a
good big omelet. Have you brought any parsley with
you?”

“Lots on't, sur—and a doozen or twa little ingans,
and soom tarragon. Ay's mak a first-rate omelet, ay's
oophaud it.”

“Very well, then look quick about it, and leave us
the keys. We'll get the things out, and lay the table,
this time, for it's growing late. What liquor have you
brought, beside champagne?”

“A gallon demijohn o' t' paine-apple room, 'at Measter
Forester aye laikes sae weel, and anither o' t' auld pale
Cognac; and anither yet o' t' Ferintosh to fill t' dram
bottles.”

“Let us have the pine-apple rum, and some water
screeching hot. Now, mizzle. Come, Frank, pull that
big round table into the middle of the room; I'll open
the boxes.”

And suiting the action to the word, he unlocked the
large chest, which displayed at the top a shallow tray
containing a supply of cutlery and napkins; a coffee-pot
and spirit-lamp, and a small breakfast service, with a
silver stew-pan and gridiron. This tray removed, several
tiers were discovered of bright tin boxes of various
sizes, piled one above the other, such as are used

by restaurateurs for sending out hot dinners to their
customers.

Just as this was done, the door opened and a buxom
Dutch serving-girl entered with a large table-cloth of
very coarse but very clean home-made linen, followed
by another carrying several plates and dishes empty, in
addition to a magnificent brown loaf, and butter, like
that set before Sisera, in a lordly dish.

“That's my good lasses,” exclaimed Harry. “Now
if you'll get us the big punch-bowl and ladle, and bring
us a kettle of hot water, we'll see to all the rest. Now,
Frank, the big dish. It will just hold the ham. Look
you here, is it not a fine one? Pure Yorkshire, and how
beautifully brazed! There, set it at the head of the
table; and give me that other dish for the larded grouse;
we shall sup as well as if we were at home, at my
shooting-box. Now, then, I'll open the leather case,
and get out the glass and siller; do you fetch the napkins
and cutlery, and see that you fold the napkins in right
form, or Timothy will laugh at you. It's no lark to me
to eat a good supper with two-pronged steel forks, or to
drink champagne out of their vile glass an inch thick.”

“I'd be all-fired sorry,” interposed Tom, “to be a
bottle of champagne afore you, if so be that you were
a bit dry, in a quart pewter mug, or an earthen—”

“How should you like to be a pea, Tom,” Frank
interrupted him, “and he with a two-pronged pitchfork?”

“It 'ud take a most onmighty pitchfork to hoist me,
if I war a pea.”

“You'd make a tolerable marrow-fat, I think, Tom.
I'd bet on your taking a premium at the agricultural.”

“It would require an infernal gizzard to digest him,”
said Archer, laughing.

“Why, yes,” said Frank; “I don't think he'd agree
very well with the man who ate him; as poor Sidney
Smith wished the new Bishop of Zealand that he might
do, when he was on the eve of sailing for his diocese.”

“Better a darned sight be in a diocess, whativer it may
be, nor on the pint of a pitchfork,” said Tom grinning.
“But come, boys, come—I could eat—I could eat—”

“Could you eat a young child with the small-pox,
Tom, as Alick Bell says, when he's peckish?” asked
Frank.

“You darned etarnal little beast,” replied Tom,
aiming a back-handed lick at him, which would have
felled an ox, much more little Frank, if he had not
dodged it. “You'd spile a horse's stomach, with your
all-fired filthy talking.”

“Hear! hear!” exclaimed Harry. “If that does
not beat Satan preaching against sin, I will say no more,
now or for ever. But I do wish Tim would come, and
that Dutch hunting fellow.”

“Shall you wait supper for the hunting Dutchman?”

“Wait h—!” cried Tom, savagely. “I'd see every
Dutchman out of all Jarsey, and Pennsylvany arter that,

in the tother place, afore I'd wait a minute. Wait
supper! The boy's mad! This comes o'what he calls
breedin'! Darn all sich breedin', I say. It'll breed nothin'
I knows on, if it beant maggots in a body's brain.”

By this time, Frank had disposed four plates in orderly
array, with upon each a neatly-folded napkin, and a
thick hunch of brown bread in its snowy bosom; had
placed the ham and cold grouse, with their carving-knives
and forks in bright symmetry beside them, and
was looking on with an air of extreme satisfaction, while
Harry drew out of the leathern casket a set of neat
castors, replenished with every sauce and condiment
that Bininger can furnish, each bottle secured, like a
smelling-flask, by a screw top of silver. These placed
on the centre of the board, he produced next two silver
salt-cellars, a dozen table-spoons, and as many forks of
the same metal, and last not least, four tall pint beakers
of clear crystal, and four yet more capacious tumblers
of New-Castle cut glass.

A moment or two afterward, the bowl made its appearance;
the kettle was hung upon the crane above
the glowing pile of hickory; and the lemons and loaf-sugar
were disposed near the China bowl, whose vast
gulf was destined soon to entomb them.

Then the door was again thrown open, and Tim
Matlock made his entrée, bearing a tray with four wax
candles lighted, the hot potatoes, and the omelet aux
fines herbes, sending forth volumes of odoriferous steam,

which alone could have won an anchorite from his
fasting.

It was a curious scene—such a scene as never before
had that small room, with its narrow casements, and
dark wainscoting, and home-made rag carpet, witnessed.
Cookery which Ude would not have despised; game,
such as Hawker would have given five years of life to
shoot; wine, that would have been called excellent at
Crockford's; silver, of Storr and Mortimer's best fashion;
glass, such as might glitter worthily on the queen's
table; and wax candles, shedding over the whole their
pure strong lustre.

And then for the guests—the two elegant, well-formed,
high-bred gentlemen, who would have been
esteemed an acquisition to the most courtly company;
and the grotesque, original, rotund, rough-visaged,
tender-hearted yeoman; who had the racy wit of Jack
Falstaff without his abject cowardice, his sensuality
without his selfishness, his honest bearing without his
hollow heart—that king of native sportsmen!—that
trump of trumps!—honest, brave, witty, kind, eccentrical
Tom Draw of Warwick.

And now, just as the supper was all ready, and the
appetites of all still readier, the door communicating
with the bar-room, or ball-room rather, was thrown
open, and thereat entered one whom I must stop a moment
to describe—Dolph Pierson, the Dutch Hunter.

It might be almost sufficient to say, that this man was

in all external parts, and in many mental qualities, the
very converse of Tom Draw—but he is a real picture,
and as such, I will paint him.

He was three inches above six feet in height, and of
bone and frame which were almost gigantic, whereas
honest Tom was nearly a foot shorter than his rival
sportsman, and so light of bone, that it was difficult to
understand on what principle the vast mass of flesh
which he bore about with him was supported; much
more how it was moved, at times, with so much agility
and sprightliness. Then again it appeared, at first sight,
that there was no flesh at all between the angular massive
bones, and the parchment-like skin, of the new-comer—while
honest Tom's hide was distended almost
unto bursting, by the preternatural bulk of “too, too
solid fat,” which cushioned his whole form, and made
every line about him, if not precisely a line of beauty,
at least a line of sinuous rotundity.

Dolph Pierson's face and features were as sharp and
as angular as the edge of an Indian tomahawk; his
brow was low, but neither narrow nor receding; on the
contrary, it displayed considerable amplitude in those
parts which phrenologists are pleased to designate as
the seats of ideality; and some prominence in the point
which the same learned gentry assert to contain the
organs whereby man appreciates the relations between
cause and effect. Across this forehead the skin was
drawn as tight as the parchment of a drum, indented

only by one deep furrow, running from temple to temple.
His hair was thin and straggling, and what there
was of it was as white as the drifted snow, as were also
two tufts of ragged bristles, which stood out low down on
the jaw-bone, a little way below his mouth, alone relieving
the monotonous colour of his otherwise whiskerless
and beardless physiognomy.

As if to set off the whiteness of his hair, however,
and of those twin tufts, his eyebrows, which were of
extraordinary thickness, were as black as a crow's
wing, running in a straight line, without any arch above
the eyes.

The eyes, themselves, which were very deeply set,
and, in fact, almost entombed between the sharp projection
of the brow, and the almost fleshless process of
the cheek-bones, were dark, twinkling, restless, never
fixed for a moment, but ever roving, as if in quest of
something which he was anxiously seeking. His nose
was of the highest and keenest aquiline, starting out
suddenly at one acute angle from between his eyes, and
then turning as abruptly downward, in a line parallel
to the face, the point at the curvature, or summit, appearing
as if it would pierce through the skin.

The nostrils were rather widely expanded, and their
owner had a habit of distending them, as if he were-snuffing
the air; so that many of his neighbours believed
that he actually was gifted with the hound's instinct of
following game by the scent.

His mouth, to conclude, was wide, straight, thin-lipped,
and so closely glued down upon his few remaining
stumps of teeth, that it seemed as if it had never
been intended to open; and indeed it was the abode of
an organ, which, if not endowed with great eloquence,
had at least a vast talent for taciturnity.

Such were the features of the man who entered the
room, walking in-toed, like an Indian, with long noiseless
strides, with a singular stoop, not of his shoulders,
but of his neck itself, and with his eyes so riveted to
the ground, that it appeared very difficult for him to
raise them to the faces of those he came to visit.

He was dressed in a thick blanket coat, of a dingy
green colour, with a sort of brown binding down the
seams, and a sash of brown worsted about his waist.
On his head he wore a sort of skulleap of gray fox-skin,
with the brush sewed across it, like the crest of a dragoon
helmet, about four inches of the white tag waving
loose like a crest from the top of the crown. Two cross
belts of buckskin were thrown across his shoulders, that
on the right supporting an oxhorn, quaintly, carved, and
scraped so thin that the dark colour of the powder could
be seen through it in many places; and that on the left
garnished with a long wooden-handled butcher-knife in
a greasy scabbard. A tomahawk was thrust into his
sash, its sharp head guarded by a sort of leathern
pocket, and from the front of the girdle was suspended
a pouch of otter-skin, containing balls, bullet-mould,

charger, greased wadding, and all the apparatus necessary
for cleaning the heavy rifle which he carried in his
hand, and which, at least in his waking hours, he was
seldom, if ever, known to lay aside.

To complete his costume, his feet were shod in Indian
moccasins, and his legs encased in stout buckskin
leggins, supported by garters rich in embroideries of
porcupine-quills, and laced over his rough homespun
pantaloons.

Archer was standing at the head of the table whetting
his carving-knife on an ivory-handled steel, preparatory
to an attack on the ham, when the old hunter
entered; but as he saw the gaunt raw-boned figure, he
laid it down instantly, and stepped forward with extended
hand to greet him.

“Ah! Dolph, how are you? I am glad to see you,
man; I was afraid you would not have come in time for
supper.”

The hunter raised his eyes for a moment to the expressive
face of the speaker, but before it had dwelt
there a moment perusing the well-known features, it
had wandered away to decipher the visages of the other
tenants of the seats at the table. A pleasant smile,
however, dimpled his cheek and twinkled for an instant
in the dark eye, as he pressed Harry's hand cordially,
and made reply.

“Middlin' well, Mister Aircher. I supped six hours
ago—how is't with yourself?”

“What if you did, boy?” interrupted Fat Tom, before
Archer could reply. “You must have got ongodly
hungry in six hours, I guess. Sit by—sit by—darn all
sich nonsense.”

“I niver eats only twice of a day,” replied the hunter,
without a smile, and without moving a muscle of his
face. “And I niver eats hog, nohow, nor birds neither,”
he added, quietly, after a moment's pause, during
which he had looked over the fire, the gun-cases, and all
the baggage in the room, not excluding Timothy, whom
he seemed to regard as the greatest curiosity of the
whole. No one, however, had seen him look toward
the table, the burthen of which he named so accurately.

“Do you drink iver, Dolph?” asked Tom, half jeeringly,
in the intervals of masticating the wing of the
cold ruffed grouse, with a modicum of the thin-shaved
ham.

“When liquor's good, and I'm adry!”

“Niver, when you're not adry, Dolph?”

“Niver!”

“Then you're the darnedest stupid Dutchman I iver
comed acrost,” replied the fat man. “Leastways onless
you're always dry, like I be. Another glass of that'ere
champagne, Timothy.”

“Come, sit down, sit down, Dolph,” said Harry,
“and if you really will not eat anything, at least take a
drink with us.”

“Well, I don't care if I do!” responded the man of

few words, depositing his rifle in the corner of the room,
and taking his seat, quietly, between Archer and Tom,
who was already steeping his soul in the third beaker
of dry champagne.

“What will you have, Dolph? Champagne, or—”

“Some of the rum, Mr. Aircher,” answered the man,
with perfect readiness, while Timothy stared at him
with inexpressible astonishment, more than suspecting
him to be what he would have called in his native dialect,
a “waise mon,” meaning thereby, neither more
nor less than a wizzard.

At a glance from his master, however, the Yorkshireman
so far recovered himself, as to hand a square case-bottle
to the hunter, who forthwith decanted about half
a pint into the largest tumbler, and, disdainfully waving
away the water, which Tim offered to him, made a circular
nod to the company, muttered “Here's luck!”
and swallowed it at a gulp.

Then he shook his head approvingly, winked his eye
hard, and snuffed the air repeatedly, and after that
mute but expressive pantomime, held forth the empty
tumbler to Timothy, with a gesture towards the pitcher,
indicating that he desired it filled with water.

When he had received, however, the pure element,
he paused, as if unwilling to remove the delicious aroma
from his palate.

“I knowed it,” said he, thoughtfully, as he again

shook his head; “jest as I'spected, adzactly. Them's
prime sperrits.”

At this unusually long speech, Harry smiled, knowing
his man, and made answer—

“Since you like it, had you not better repeat the
dose?”

“Not this night, if I knows it.”

By this time, Frank, who had never before met this
original, and who had been studying his characteristic
answers, inquired, with a view to drawing him out—

“Pray, Mr. Pierson, if you never eat hog or birds,
may I be allowed to ask what you do eat—if it's not
impertinent?”

“It's not imperent at all,” said Dolph. “I eats
a'most any wild crittur what runs; deer, or bar meat,
or possum, may be.”

“Did you ever eat a skunk, Dolph?” asked Harry.

“A skunk killed dead at the fust lick, and well cleaned,
's not bad eatin',” interposed Tom. “Say, Dolph,
did you iver eat wolf?”

“Niver—nor no dog nuther, Mister Draw!” replied
the hunter, somewhat testily, as if he fancied they were
quizzing him—“No, nor no calf, nuther. I don't think
much,” he added, looking at Tom, as if to pay him off,
“of a man, what eats calf, nohow.”

“Nor I, Mr. Pierson, nor I,” put in Frank with
great alacrity, delighted to find an auxiliary in one of
his crotchets, which was an absolute contempt for veal

in all its combinations. “I never eat it myself; in fact,
I had about as soon eat dog.”

“I niver knowed a raal sportin' man as wouldn't!”
answered the hunter, evidently gratified by Frank's adherence
to his opinion; whereupon that worthy resumed,
filling his glass with champagne—

“Well, if you will not join us, allow me to drink your
health. I have heard of you from Mr. Archer, often.”

“Yes, Mr. Aircher knows me,” said the hunter,
quietly, and apparently unaware of the intended compliment.

“Do tell, Dolph—” Tom put in, at this moment,
what my poor friend, J. Cypress, Jr., was wont to call
his lingual oar, with the evident intent of kicking up a
row, “Do tell us, Dolph—you said you niver eat no
wolf—did no wolf niver eat you?”

“Niver!—whar's your eyes? Don't you see me?”

“Guess you'd a made 'em sick. They couldn't eat
you, nohow.”

“They comed darned nigh to it oncet, inyhow.”

“Did they? By George! you never told me that,”
said Harry.

“I'm no great things at talking. If you want to hear
bragging, you must set Draw agoin'. Well! well!
there was wolves them times.”

“There are wolves now,” replied Forester.

The hunter looked at him doubtfully, yet with a
wistful eye.

“Not hereaways,” he said, at length. “Leastwise I
hain't heerd none, nor seen no track of none, this six
year. Yet I some thought to-day they mout a gotten
back, like.”

“They have got back,” said Frank earnestly. “We
heard one howl, to-night, scarcely a mile hence.”

Doubtful, perhaps, as to the certainty of Frank's information,
and science in wood-craft, Dolph cast a quick
glance of inquiry at Harry; and on receiving his affirmative
nod in reply, brought down his hand with a heavy
slap on his sinewy thigh, and cried aloud, in tones far
more apimated than he was wont to use—

“Darnation, if I isn't glad on't!”

“Why?” exclaimed Forester, hoping to detect old
Draw in some blunder, as to his previous reasoning.

“Caze I hates, wust kind, to be mistaken—and I half
thought last night they'd got back agin.”

“And pray, what made you think so?”

“Why, I camped out nigh the Green Pond last
night, seein' I'd sot some lines for pickerel; and bein'
it was sorter cold, I kinneled up a fire, and sure enough,
an old doe, with two well-grown fa'ans at her side,
comed right up into the circle of the blaze, and
scrouched down in the fern, not ten yards from my
camp-fire. I knowed they must a' been skeart orfully
to come down on a man o' purpose.”

“How do you know that they came on purpose?”
asked Frank, more intent on fathoming this man's, to

him, incomprehensible sagacity, than even on gaining
information.

“How did I know?—Didn't they come up wind on
me? They knowed I was there a mile off—and they
did right, by thunder! I'd not a hurted a hair on 'em for
a hundred dollars.”

“I'm sure you would not, Dolph,” replied Harry,
“But come—Timothy has cleared away the eatables,
and I am going to brew a bowl of hot rum punch. You
must break your rule for once, Dolph, and take another
glass to oblige me; and blow a cloud, and spin us a yarn
about the wolves coming nigh to eating you.”

“I'd do a'most anything to obleege you, Mister Archer,
and you knows it. But I'd ruther not drink, nohow—and
that's along o' the wolves comin' so nigh as
they did to eatin' me, too, I tell you.”

“Well—I'll press no man to drink against his better
judgment,” said Harry, as he brewed the fragrant
compound.

“I knowed you wouldn't, when I telled you I'd ruther
not.”

“Well, as I do not, you will blow a cloud with us,
and spin us the yarn,” said Archer. “Forester and I
are dying to hear it.”

“Sartin I will,” replied Pierson; “and I'll blow a
cloud too; but the yarn's like to be a short 'un.”

“Pass up your glasses, boys; let me help you. This
is prime, and after a cold night-ride and a cold supper,

it will do none of us a thought of harm. Hand the
cheroots round, Timothy. Those are good, Pierson.”

“I smokes in an Injun pipe allus, with Kinnekinninck.
I larnt that, when I hunted years and years
agone with the Mohawks in these hunting-grounds.
Ah! they was hunting-grounds in them days!”

“Now then for your story,” said Harry, when the
pipes were all lighted, and the punch tasted and approved.
“Begin as quick as you can, and after that we will to
bed instantly—for we must be afoot early.”

“Sartin we must, if we means venison. Well, well!
It's nigh forty years agone, it is, and I could shoot some
then, and was right and smart and strong, I tell you—
but I did spree it oncet in a while like—not to say that
I was a drunkard—for sometimes I'd go weeks and
months on cold water; but then, agin, I'd git right hot,
I tell you, for a week, maybe, and spend half my airnin's
like, and be good for nothing for a month arterward.
Well, well! there was few houses in them days, nor no
clearin's nigher than the Coshocton turnpike. There
was no village here, nor no store nigher than Jess
Wood's, clear away beyant Hans Schneider's toll-gate.
I lived here all alone, where I lives now. I'd a putty
nice log house, and a log stable for old Roan, and a leanto
for my dogs, jest on the pond's edge. Well—it was
winter time, and winters in them days was six times as
cold as they is now. There was nigh six foot of snow
on the level, and in the hollows it was drifted twice as

deep, all on it, I reckon. Well—deer was a hundred
where you'll find ten these times, and bar a thousand on
'em. I'd had good luck all winter, and it was nigh the
holydays, and I'd got out o' lead ean a'most, and putty
short of powder. It fruz ivery night sharper nor nothin,
and there was sich a crust as mout ha' borne an elephant
—but there warn't elephant them days—seems to me
they grows plentier as bar grows scacer, and beaver
ain't none left. Well—I rigged up a jumper, and loaded
it with peltry, and hitched up old Roan, and offed to Jess
Wood's—twenty mile, I guess—through a blazed wood
road, meanin' to git me a keg or two of powder and
some bars of lead, sell off my plunder, and be back
same night. Off I went sartin—but when I comed to
Jess's, there was a turkey-shoot you see, and a hull
grist o' boys, and we shot days, and drinked and played
nights—and to be done with't, 'twas the third day, putty
well on for night, when I started, and I putty hot at that
Well—it was moonlight nights, and I got along smart
and easy, till I got on the hill, jest above the beaver dam.
The beaver dam warn't broke then, and the pond was
full, but it was fruz right sharp and hard, and I went
over it, at a smart trot, and was thinkin' I'd be hum in
an hour, when jest as I was half ways over I heerd a
wolf howl, and then another, and then another, and in
less time than I can tell you, there was thutty or fawty
of them devils a jabberin' as fast as iver you heerd
Frenchmen, on my trail; and afore I was well acrost, I
could see them comin', yelpin' and screechin' all in a
black snarl like, all on 'em together, over the clear ice.
Well—I whipped up old Roan, and little whip he needed,
for when he heerd them yell, he laid down his ears, and
laid down his belly to the snow, and by thunder! didn't
he strick it though! Over rough, over smooth, up hill and
down hollow—and oncet I thought we should a run clear
out of hearin' on 'em. But goin' up the big mountain,
when we was nigh the crown, I carn't tell how it was
adzactly, but pitch down we went into a darned rocky
hole, and the fust thing I knowed I was half head over in
the snow, and the jumper broke to etarnal smash, and old
Roan gone ahead like the wind—and I left alone to fight
fawty howlin' devils, and putty hot at that. Well, I tuk
heart, and fixed my rifle, and as they come a yelpin' up the
hill, I drawed stret, and shot one down, and run like thunder,
aloadin' as I went, for I knowed as the bloody devils
would stop to tar' the one I'd wounded into slivers, and
while they was a tar'ing him for sartin, their screeches
mout a' made a body's hair stand up on his head like—but
they soon quit that fun, and took my trail agin in airnest.
Well, I got loaded, and I went to prime, and darned if
my flint hadn't got smashed to pieces. I felt in my
pouch, in my pockets—not a flint! I was hot, as I telled
you, when I quit Jess's, and left them on the bar. Oh,
warn't I in a fix! and there warn't no big trees nuther;
and if there had a been, it was so bitter cold I thought
a man must a' died afore it was mornin'. But I thought
it warn't no use to say die, no how—so I run for the
biggest tree and clum it. It warn't thicker nor my body
much, a stunt hemlock, not over fifteen feet, or eighteen
at most to the fust limb, and none higher that would
bear my weight, and a tight match if that would. Well,
I clum it—and there, from eleven o'clock of a winter's
night, I set perishin' with cold and a'most dead with
fear—I arn't easily skeart nuther—with them fawty
devils howlin' under me, and lickin' their bloody chaps,
and glarin' with their fiery eyes, and ivery now and then
a big 'un jumpin' within three feet of the limb I sot on,
and the limb crackin' and the tree bendin', 'at I thought
it 'ud go ivery minnit. Day broke at last, and then I
hoped they'd a quit—but not they. The sun riz—still
thar they was a circlin' round the tree, madder nor iver,
foamin' and frothin' at their jaws, and oncet and agin
fightin' and tearin' at one another. Gentlemen, I was a
young stout man, when I clum that hemlock, and my
hair war as black as a crow's back. When I fell down,
for come down I didn't, I was as thin and as bent, ay!
and as white-headed as you see me. Since then, I
niver drinked only when I war dry, and then niver over
oncet in the mornin' and oncet agin at night.”

“But how, in Heaven's name! did you escape them?”
asked Forester, who was interested beyond measure in
the wild narrative.

“By Heaven's help!” answered the hunter, solemnly.
“Some chaps chanced on old Roan's carcass in

the woods, arter they devils killed him, and knowed
whose horse he war, and tuk the back track, and come
down on the mad brutes from to leeward, with seven
good true rifles. They killed five on 'em at the
fust shot, let alone what they wounded; and the rest
made stret tracks; but I didn't see it. For at the crack
of the fust shot, my head went round and round, and I
pitched down right amongst them. But they was
skeart as bad as I was, and hadn't no time to look arter
me. Well, Mister Aircher, my tale is telt, and my
pipe smoked, so I'll go lie down on my barskin by the
kitchen fire, and you'll be for bed, I guess—for we
must rouse up bright and airly. I telled Jake to have
breakfast two hours afore sunrise.”

“We will go to bed. Thank you for your tale. I
will never ask you to drink again. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

And catching up his rifle, he left the room without
any further words.

“That is a singular and superior man,” said Forester,
as he closed the door.

“Yes, indeed is he!” replied Archer.

“Putty smart for a Dutchman,” said Tom.

“He speaks better English than you, Tom,” answered
Forester.

“Better H—! He's as Dutch as thunder! Goodnight,
boys.”

And so they broke up the sederunt.