tation of quietness he asked for I
would immediately comply with, and begged him to sit down beside me and
tell me where I was and how I had come hither. Having established an
outwork of a table and two chairs between us, and cautiously having left
the door ajar to secure his retreat, he drew the scymitar and placed it
before him, his eyes being fixed on me the entire time.

"Well," said he, as he assumed a seat, and leaned his arm on the table,
"so you are quiet at last. Lord, what a frightful lunatic you were!
Nobody would approach your bed but me. The stoutest keeper of Swift's
Hospital fled from the spot; while I said, 'Leave him to me, the human
eye is your true agent to humble the pride of maniacal frenzy.'"

With these words he fixed on me a look such as the chief murderer in a
melodrama assumes at the moment he proceeds to immolate a whole family.

"You infernal young villain, how I subdued you! how you quailed before
me!"

There was something so ludicrous in the contrast of this bravery with
his actual terror, that again I burst out a-laughing; upon which
he sprang up, and brandishing his sabre, vowed vengeance on me if I
stirred. After a considerable time spent thus, I at last succeeded in
impressing him with the fact, that if I had all the will in the world
to tear him to pieces, my strength would not suffice to carry me to the
door,--an assurance which, however sorrowfully made by me, I perceived
to afford him the most unmixed satisfaction.

"That's right, quite right," said he; "and mad should he be indeed who
would measure strength with me. The red men of Tuscarora always called
me the 'Great Buffalo.' I used to carry a bark canoe with my squaw and
nine little black devils under one arm, so as to leave the other free
for my tomahawk. 'He, how, he!' that 's the war step."

Here he stooped down to his knees, and then sprang up again, with a yell
that actually made me start, and brought a new actor on the scene in
the person of Anna Maria, whose name I had so frequently heard the night
before.

"What is the matter?" said the lady, a short, squablike woman, of nearly
the captain's age, but none of his personal attractions. "We can't have
him screaming all day in that fashion."

"It isn't he; it was I who was performing the war dance. Come, now, let
down your hair, and be a squaw,--do. What trouble is it? And bring in
Saladin; we'll get up a combat scene. Devilish fine thought that!"

The indignant lo