they will civilize, if not Christianize them?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Damon, with another loud crack, and rolling a huge quid of tobacco to the opposite side of his mouth, "they might as well mount the trees and preach to the 'coons and tree-frogs; one of your real psalm-singers mout tree a coon at it, but hang me if he can ever put the pluck of a white man under a yellow jacket. Catch a weasel asleep or a fox at a foot race. I rather suspicion, stranger, that I've seen more Injins than your missionaries, and I'll tell you the way to tame 'em;—slit their windpipes and hamstring 'em."

"Perhaps you are an enemy to religion, or prejudiced against the missionaries?"

"No! no! stranger, no! I likes religion well enough of a Sunday; but hang me if I should not die of laughin to see 'em layin it down to the redskins. I'd as soon think of going into my horse stable and preachin to the dumb brutes. Old Pete here knows more now than many an Injin, and he's got more soul than some Yankees that mout be named; but come, stranger, here's a public house, let's go in and cut the phlegm."

"Agreed," said Lamar, "but it must be at my expense."

"Well," said Damon, "we'll not quarrel about that;" and turning to Victor, "Stranger, won't you join us in a glass of tight?"

"No! I thank you," said Chevillere, "but I will look on while you and my friend drink to the better acquaintance of us all."

After the parties had refreshed themselves and their horses, and remounted, the conversation was resumed. "Well now," said the Kentuckian, addressing Victor, "I wish I may be contwisted if you ain't one of the queerest men, to come from the Carolinas, I have clapped eyes on this many a day. You don't chaw tobacco, and you don't drink nothin; smash my apple-cart if I can see into it."

"I am one of those that don't believe in the happy effects of either brandy or tobacco," replied Chevillere.

"Then you are off the trail for once in your life, stranger, for I take tobacco to be one of God's mercies to the poor. Whether it came by a rigular dispensation of providence (as our parson used to say), or in a natural way, I can't tell; but hang me, if when I gets a quid of the real Kentuck twist or Maryland kite-foot into my mouth, if I ain't as proud a man as the grand Turk himself. It drives away the solemncholies, and makes a fellow feel so good-natured, and so comfortable; it turns the shillings in his pocket into dollars, and his wrath into fun and deviltry. Let them talk about tobacco as they choose among the fine gals, and at their theatres, and balls, and cotillions, and all them sort of things; but let one of 'em git twenty miles deep into a Kentuck forest, and then see if a chew of the stuff ain't good for company and comfort."

"But you did not tell me," resumed Lamar, "whether you had ever shot at a white man?"

"No! no! I never did; and I don't know that I ever will. I think I should feel a leetle particlar, at standin up and shooting at a real Christian man, with flesh and blood like you and me. You see, when we boys of the long guns shoot, we don't turn our heads away and pull trigger in a world of smoke, so that nobody can tell where the lead goes; we look right into the white of a fellow's eye, and can most always tell which side of his nose the ball went, and you see that would be but a slayin and skinnen business among white people; but as to shootin and sculpin Injins, that's a thing there is no bones made about, because out on the frontiers at the west, if a man should stand addlin his brains about the right and the wrong of the thing, the red devils would just knock them out to settle the matter, and sculp him for his pains into the bargain. Shooting real Christian men's quite another thing. It's what I ha'nt tried yet; but when we Kentuck boys gits at it, it won't all end like a log-rollin, with one or two broken shins and a black eye. But I'm told the Yankees always sings a psalm before they go to battle. Now, according to my notion, a chap would make a blue fist of takin a dead aim through double sights, with the butt end of a psalm in his guzzle."

"Some person must have told you that as a joke," said Lamar.

"No, no, I believe it, because we had just such a fellow once in our neighbourhood—a Yankee schoolmaster—and we took him out a deer-driving two or three times, and he was always singing a psalm at his stand. He spoilt the fun, confound him! Hang me if I didn't always think the fellow was afraid to stand in the woods by himself without it. I went to his singin school of Saturday nights, too; but I never had a turn that way. All the master could do, he could'nt keep me on the trail,—I was for ever slipping into Yankee Doodle; you see, every once in a while, the tune would take a quick turn, like one I knowed afore, so I used to blaze away at it with the best of 'em, but the same old Yankee Doodle always turned up at the end. But the worst of it was, the infernal Yankee spoiled all the music I ever had in me; when I come out of the school, I thought the gals at home would have killed themselves laughin' at me. They said I ground up Yankee Doodle and Old Hundred together, all in a hodge-podge, so I never sings to no one now but the dumb brutes in the stable, when they gits melancholy of a rainy day. Old Pete here raises his ears, and begins to snort the minute I raises a tune."

"Your singing-master was, like his scholar, an original."

"An original! When he come to them parts, he drove what we call a Yankee cart, half wagon and half carriage, full of all sorts of odds and ends; when he had sold them out, he sold his horse and cart too, and then turned in to keepin a little old-field school; and over and above this, he opened a Saturday night singin-school,—and I reckon we had rare times with the gals there. At last, when the feller had got considerable ahead, the word came out that he was studyin to be a doctor; and sure enough, in a few months, he sold out the school for so much a head, just like we sell our hogs; then off the Yankee starts to git made a doctor of; and hang me if ever I could see into that business. How they can turn a pedlar into a doctor in four months, is a leetle jist over my head. It's true enough they works a mighty change in the chaps in that time. Our Yankee went off, as well-behaved and as down-faced a chap as you would wish to see in a hundred, and wore home-made clothes like mine; but when he had staid his four months out, and 'most everybody had forgot him, one day as I was leanen up against one of the poplar trees in the little town, I saw a sign goin up on the side of a house, with Doctor Gun in large letters. I'll take my Bible oath, when I saw the thing, I thought I should have broke a blood-vessel. Howsomever, I strained 'em down, till an old woman would have sworn I had the high-strikes, with a knot o' wind in my guzzle. But I quieted the devil in me, and then I slipped slyly over the street, behind where the doctor was standing with his new suit of black; one hand stuck in his side, and the other holding an ivory-headed stick up to his mouth in the most knowing fashion, I tell you. I stole up behind him, and bawled out in his ear, as loud as I could yell, 'faw—sol—law—me.' Oh! my grandmother! what a smashin rage he flew into; he shook his cane—he walked backwards and forwards—and didn't he make the tobacco juice fly? I rather reckon, if I hadn't had so many inches, he'd have been into my meat; but the fun of it all was, the feller had foreswore his mother tongue; dash me if he could talk a word of common lingo, much less sing psalms and hymns by note; he rattled off words as long as my arm, and as fast as a windmill. Some of the old knowing ones says they've got some