mile, that the very sight of him was
disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face. It seemed as if
it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed. It
was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child. He had twinkling
brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of
leather. His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted
in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the
early corn. Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings
generally worn by the frontiersmen, but the face of the other had a
certain incongruity with his friend's, and was more difficult to
decipher. It looked good,--not kind, but true. It had severe pragmatic
lines about the mouth, and the lips were thin and somewhat fixedly set.
His eyes were dark, serious, and very intent, as if he could argue and
protest very earnestly on matters of no weight. He would in a question
of theory go very far if set on the wrong line, and just as far on the
right. The direction was the matter of great moment, and this seemed now
in the hands of the haphazard but scheming Irishman.

"If it plaze yer honor," said O'Kimmon in English, taking off his
coonskin cap with a lavish flourish as a tall and stately Indian hastily
garbed in fine raiment of the aboriginal type, a conspicuous article of
which was a long feather-wrought mantle, both brilliant and delicate of
effect, detached himself from the group and came forward, "I can't spake
yer illigant language,--me eddication bein' that backward,--but I kin
spake me own so eloquent that it would make a gate-post prick up the
ears of understanding. We've come to visit yez, sor."

The smile which the Hibernian bent upon the savage was of a honeyed
sweetness, but the heart of his companion sank as he suddenly noted the
keen, intuitive power of comprehension expressed in the face of the old
Indian. Here was craft too, but of a different quality, masked, potent,
impossible to divine, to measure, to thwart. The sage Oo-koo-koo stood
motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed
as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the
strangers,--first of one, then deliberately of the other. A war captain
(his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with
his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming
precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet,