digence. And then what an inexhaustible
field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and
achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering
spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.

All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
"wandering up and down upon the earth," and, indeed, a crafty
disposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected
tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to
a continual change of scene and society.

My reflections were here interrupted.

"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.

The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating
violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an
attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,
unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I
suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forward
and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the
forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.
It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort
of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of
blue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of
silver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had
interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim
of the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the
first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the
Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summer
excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch
canoes among the coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam beside