of recognition rather than
discovery, and when the unknown became a feature it was as a matter of
speculation.

"Here! here!" exclaimed one wiry being of ten,--his limited corporeal
structure, too, was incased in buckskin, the pioneer mother, like other
mothers, feeling no vocation toward works of supererogation in the way
of patching, and having discovered that skins of beasts resist the
clutch of briers and the destructive propensities characteristic of
callow humanity better than cloth, even of the stoutest homespun
weave,--"here's where the tomahawk knocked him senseless!"

"Here's where the scalping-knife began!" cried a snaggle-toothed worthy,
from the half-bent posture in which he had been surveying the forlorn
cicatrices of the bare poll, and digging his heels into the red-clay
slope to sustain his weight.

"No, no--here!" advanced another theorist.

Odalie turned her head away; it was too horrible!--or she would have
seen the tugging climb of Josephine and her triumphant emergence on the
slope amongst the boys. They looked at her in surprise for a moment, but
without resentment, for it was too good an opportunity to rehearse the
history that so enchanted them.

"Here, here," the shrill voices began anew. "Here's where the tomahawk
hit him a clip!" "An' here," shrieked out another, seizing upon Fifine's
chubby little hand that her own soft finger might have the privilege of
exploring the wound, "here's where the scalping-knife circled him
round!"

"The Injun begun here first, but his knife was dull, an' he had to mend
his holt!" screeched a third.

"An',--an', 'n," vociferated another, almost speechless in the
contemplation of so bloody a deed, "ter git a full purchase onto it the
Injun held him down by putting a foot on his breast!" He lifted his own
bare foot, itself a cruel and savage sight, scarred with the scratching
of briers and stone-bruises and the results of what is known as
dew-poison--he called it "jew-pizen," and so do those of his ilk to this
good day,--and aped the gesture so present to his imagination.

Fifine knew only too well what it all meant, as her soft infantile face,
incongruously maternal with compassion, bent above the hideous record of
a hideous deed.

"All this here," cried the first expositor, sparing a sustaining hand to
hold her by the elbow,--for her weight not being sufficient to drive her
heels into the clay slope, she had given imminent signs of slipping down
the i