bandy with the Susquehannock
boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They
put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into
their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a
stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's
neck, but short legs. Nanking doubted if it could stand on one leg on
the top of a chimney and feed worms around to the young stork family,
but he felt very proud and happy. The whole tribe seemed to have
assembled to see Nanking go away. He had become the friend of all the
boys and women and the _protege_ of the tall warriors. They placed his
stork in a canoe, and in a second canoe following it were a couple of
large deers freshly killed, which he was to take to his mother as the
gift of the fierce Susquehannocks. Amid the cheers and adieus of the
nation the two canoes pushed off and, entering the broad bay, paddled
up a river under the side of a bar of blue mountains, until the river
dwindled to a mere creek, and finally its navigation ceased
altogether. By signs upon the head of the dead stag, indicating a
larger deer, Nanking knew they were at the "Head-of-Elk" River. His
fierce friends left him here with many professions of apology and
esteem, and soon after they departed Swedes and Minquas appeared, who
had observed the hostile canoes from their lookout stations on the
neighboring hills. These also welcomed Nanking, being already well
acquainted with him, and taking up his venison proceeded through the
woods toward New Amstel. He carried the live stork himself--a rough
bird, which would not yield to blandishments or good treatment. After
a very fatiguing journey and four days' absence from home, Nanking
entered New Amstel in the dead of night.

"To-morrow," he thought, "I shall be repaid for all this. They will
say, 'Nanking Cloos is the smartest man in the colony of New Amstel.'
Perhaps I shall be a burgomaster, and eat terrapin stewed in Canary
wine!"

Nanking was up betimes, looking at the chimneys on his mother's
dwelling, of which there were two, and both were the largest chimneys
in New Amstel. The Widow Cloos lived in a huge log building with brick
ends, long and rather low, which had been built by the commissary of
the colony at the expense of the city of Amsterdam as a magazine of
food and supply for her colonists; but after several years of
unprofitable experiment with the colony, it was resolved to give no
mo