es for, and they go off with
him leading them, but he never comes into the settlements on horseback."

"Does he always go barefoot?" I asked.

"Sometimes he makes bark sandals. If you give him a pair of shoes he'll
give them away to the first person that can wear them and needs them.
Hunters wrap dried leaves around their leggins to keep the rattlesnakes
out, but Johnny never protects himself at all."

"No wonder," spoke a soldier. "Any snake'd be discouraged at them
shanks. A seven-year rattler'd break his fang on 'em."

Johnny came out of the cook-house with an iron poker, and heated it in
the coals. All the men around the fire waited, understanding what he was
about to do, but my own breath drew with a hiss through my teeth as he
laid the red hot iron first on one long cut and then another in his
travel-worn feet. Having cauterized himself effectually, and returned
the poker, he took his place in perfect serenity, without any show of
pain, prepared to accommodate himself to the company.

Some boys, awake with the bigness of the occasion, sat down near Johnny
Appleseed, and gave him their frank attention. Each boy had his hair cut
straight around below the ears, where his mother had measured it with an
inverted bowl, and freshly trimmed him for life in the fort, and perhaps
for the discomfiture of savages, if he came under the scalping knife.
Open-mouthed or stern-jawed, according to temperament, the young
pioneers listened to stories about Tecumseh, and surmises on the enemy's
march, and the likelihood of a night attack.

"Tippecanoe was fought at four o'clock in the morning," said a soldier.

"I was there," spoke out Johnny Appleseed.

No other man could say as much. All looked at him as he stood on his
cauterized feet, stretching his arms, lean and sun-cured, upward in the
firelight.

"Angels were there. In rain and darkness I heard them speak and say, 'He
hath cast the lot for them, and His hand hath divided it unto them by
line; they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall
they dwell therein. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad
for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose!'"

"Say, Johnny, what does an angel look like?" piped up one of the boys,
quite in fellowship.

Johnny Appleseed turned his rapt vision aside and answered:

"'White robes were given unto every one of them.' There had I laid me
down in peace to sleep, and the Lord made me to dw