haracter. This was John Ronackstone,
a stanch Indian fighter; a far-seeing frontier politician; a man of
excellent native faculties, all sharpened by active use and frequent
emergencies; skilled and experienced in devious pioneer craft; and
withal infinitely stubborn, glorying in the fact of the unchangeableness
of his opinions and his immutable abiding by his first statements. After
one glance at his square countenance, his steady noncommittal black
eyes, the upward bulldog cant of a somewhat massive nose, the firm
compression of his long thin lips, one would no more expect him to
depart from the conditions of a conclusion than that a signpost would
enter into argument and in view of the fatigue of a traveler mitigate
and recant its announcement.

Nevertheless Richard Mivane expected "some sense," as he phrased it,
from this adamantine pioneer. Such a man naturally arrogated and
obtained great weight among his fellows, and perhaps his lack of
vacillation furthered this preeminence. He was a good man in the main as
well as forceful, but an early and a very apt expression of the
demagogue. And as he tolerated amongst his mental furniture no illusions
and fostered no follies, his home life harbored no fripperies. His
domicile was a contrast to the better ordered homes of the station, but
here one might have meat and shelter, and what more should mortal ask of
a house! He often boasted that not an atom of iron entered into its
structure more than into an Indian's wigwam. Even the clapboards were
fastened on to the rafters with wooden pegs in lieu of nails, although
nails were not difficult to procure. He had that antagonism to the mere
conventions of civilization often manifested by those who have been
irked by such fetters before finally casting them off. It was a
wholesome life and a free, and if the inmates of the house did not mind
the scent of the drying deerskins hanging from the beams, which made the
nose of Richard Mivane very coy, the visitor saw no reason why they
should not please themselves. The stone-flagged hearth extended half
across the room, and sprawling upon it in frowsy disorder was a bevy of
children of all ages, as fat as pigs and as happy-go-lucky. He had
hardly seated himself, having stepped about carefully among their chubby
fingers and toes lest a crushing disaster supervene, than he regretted
his choice of a confidant. He had his own, unsuspected sensitiveness,
which was suddenly jarred when the