ouldn't let you sleep, eh?" he said. "Well, we must pay
the Indians off for it if they come nigh; but it's my belief that they
won't."

Then he fell to questioning me in a low tone about my adventures, and I
had to tell him how Pomp and I escaped.

"I should have liked to have been with you, my lad," he said. "I'm not
fond of fighting; had too much along with Colonel Preston; but I should
have liked to have been with you when the arrows were flying."

"I wish you had been," I said.

"Do you? Well, come, I like that; it sounds friendly. Yes, I wish I'd
been there. The cowards, shooting at people who've been soldiers, but
who want to settle down into peaceable folk, and wouldn't interfere with
them a bit. I only wish they'd come; I don't think they'd want to come
any more."

"That's what my father says," I observed. "He thinks the Indians want a
good lesson."

"So they do, my lad, so they do. Let's take, for instance, your place,
which they burned down last night. Now what for, but out of sheer nasty
mischief! There's plenty of room for them, and there's plenty of room
for us. If they think they're going to frighten us away they're
mistaken. They don't know what Englishmen are, do they, little nigger?"

"How Pomp know what de Injum tink?" said the boy, promptly.

The man turned to me and gave me a nudge, as he laughingly continued, in
the whisper in which the conversation was carried on--

"Ah, well, they don't know, but if they'd come, I think we should teach
them, for every one here's fighting for his home, without thinking about
those who are fighting for their wives and children as well. You don't
understand that yet, squire."

"I think I do," I said. "I suppose a man would fight for his wife and
children in the same way as I would try and fight for my father."

"Well, suppose it is about the same. You'll have to fight some day,
perhaps."

"Mass' George fight dreffle," put in Pomp. "Shoot lot of Injum."

"Nonsense, Pomp!" I said, hurriedly.

"Not nonsense. Pomp see um tummle down when. Mass' George shoot um."

"Why, you didn't fire on the Indians, did you, squire?" said the man.

"Lot o' times," said Pomp, quickly.

The man let his firelock go into the hollow of his left arm, and he
shook my hand warmly, as Pomp stood staring over the fence into the
darkness.

"I like that," he said, as I felt very uncomfortable and shrinking.
"But then I might have known it. Your father and C