When the logs
were brought together again the fire blazed up.

Ned and Johnny made their bed on one of the tables and slept well,
but they kicked at dipping their hands in the family stew, and
broiled their venison and made their coffee over the common fire. It
was a good-natured camp, but the boys made life a burden to the
Indians for two days by their incessant attempts at conversation in
the Indian tongue. Some of the old Indians were sociable, and the
boys got along very well with them, but the younger ones were shy
and refused to talk until, having put on the white man's clothes
that Ned had given him, Tommy took several of the young squaws and
pickaninnies out in an Indian canoe. The young Indians laughed so
much at Tommy that they began to forget their shyness, and when
Tommy bought for Ned a bright-colored Indian shirt that a squaw had
just made and the boy put it on, the Indians gathered around him
and made fun, very much as white children would have done. One of
the squaws brought him a red handkerchief, such as many of the
Indians wore, and when Ned nodded and tied it around his neck they
all laughed. Another squaw motioned at Ned's hat, and then at
several Indians who were bareheaded. Ned nodded again and tossed his
hat aside. Then as a squaw pointed at his trousers and afterwards at
the bare-legged Indians about him, Ned shook his head vigorously,
and even the older Indians joined in the laughter.

The children of the camp were shy things, and peeped out at the
strangers from behind trees and out of hiding-places, but Dick was
fond of all wild creatures and few of them could resist his friendly
advances. Soon every pickaninny in the place was tagging after him.
The older ones took him out in canoes, which soon were capsized, and
all hands swam back, each accusing the other of having upset the
craft.

When the boys went to the Osceola camp of Seminoles with Tommy they
found a people as stolid and taciturn as those of any Indian tribe
of which they had read. After four days, during which all
hospitality was extended to them, they left behind them a kindly
group of untaught native Americans, who went out of their way to
show friendliness to their guests. Johnny nearly cried over the
parting, and would have bartered his hopes of the hereafter to have
been allowed to accompany the boys, while Tommy, clothed again in
his native costume and in his right mind, preceded them for two
miles in his canoe to show t