p his journal, and read the midsummer magazines and
Byron, in the face of Mac's "I do not like Byron's thought; I do not
consider him healthy or instructive." In one of his more energetic
moods the Colonel made a four-footed cricket for Kaviak, who preferred
it to the high stool, and always sat on it except at meals.

Once in a while, when for hours no word had been spoken except some
broken reference to a royal flush or a jack-pot, or O'Flynn had said,
"Bedad! I'll go it alone," or Potts had inquired anxiously, "Got the
joker? Guess I'm euchred, then," the Boy in desperation would catch up
Kaviak, balance the child on his head, or execute some other gymnastic,
soothing the solemn little heathen's ruffled feelings, afterwards, by
crooning out a monotonous plantation song. It was that kind of addition
to the general gloom that, at first, would fire O'Flynn to raise his
own spirits, at least, by roaring out an Irish ditty. But this was
seldomer as time went on. Even Jimmie's brogue suffered, and grew less
robust.

In a depressed sort of way Mac was openly teaching Kaviak his letters,
and surreptitiously, down in the Little Cabin, his prayers. He was very
angry when Potts and O'Flynn eavesdropped and roared at Kaviak's
struggles with "Ow Farva." In fact, Kaviak did not shine as a student
of civilisation, though that told less against him with O'Flynn, than
the fact that he wasn't "jolly and jump about, like white children."
Moreover, Jimmie, swore there was something "bogey" about the boy's
intermittent knowledge of English. Often for days he would utter
nothing but "Farva" or "Maw" when he wanted his plate replenished, then
suddenly he would say something that nobody could remember having
taught him or even said in his presence.

It was not to be denied that Kaviak loved sugar mightily, and stole it
when he could. Mac lectured him and slapped his minute yellow hands,
and Kaviak stole it all the same. When he was bad--that is, when he had
eaten his daily fill of the camp's scanty store (in such a little place
it was not easy to hide from such a hunter as Kaviak)--he was taken
down to the Little Cabin, smacked, and made to say "Ow Farva." Nobody
could discover that he minded much, though he learnt to try to shorten
the ceremony by saying "I solly" all the way to the cabin.

As a rule he was strangely undemonstrative; but in his own grave little
fashion he conducted life with no small intelligence, and learned, with
an a