o band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out
to call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, you
infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye
in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail
top-knot o' your'n! _Yip-pee!_"

By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.

For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
trick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which sent
him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
landslide.

The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.

"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meat
with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
friend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
or'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from now
on, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of
which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.

As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,
pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he
would never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon the
deer's meat which was by this time--not cooked, to be sure, but seared a
little on the outside in true hunter fashion.

While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return
Ephraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to the
letter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery's
father had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered to