hold on me.
Ef I'd had the chance, I might be a purfessor, or mebbe I'd be writin'
poetry. I ain't told you about it, but when I wuz a young boy, afore I
moved with the settlers, I wuz up in these parts an' I learned to talk
Iroquois a heap. I never thought it would be the use to me it hez been
now. Ain't it funny that sometimes when you put a thing away an' it gits
all covered with rust and mold, the time comes when that same forgot
little thing is the most vallyble article in the world to you."

"Weren't you scared, Sol," persisted Paul, "to face a man like Brant,
an' pass yourself off as an Onondaga?"

"No, I wuzn't," replied the shiftless one thoughtfully, "I've been wuss
scared over little things. I guess that when your life depends on jest
a motion o' your hand or the turnin' o' a word, Natur' somehow comes to
your help an' holds you up. I didn't get good an' skeered till it wuz
all over, an' then I had one fit right after another."

"I've been skeered fur a week without stoppin'," said Tom Ross; "jest
beginnin' to git over it. I tell you, Henry, it wuz pow'ful lucky fur
us you found them steppin' stones, an' this solid little place in the
middle uv all that black mud."

"Makes me think uv the time we spent the winter on that island in
the lake," said Long Jim. "That waz shorely a nice place an' pow'ful
comf'table we wuz thar. But we're a long way from it now. That island uv
ours must be seven or eight hundred miles from here, an' I reckon it's
nigh to fifteen hundred to New Orleans, whar we wuz once."

"Shet up," said Tom Ross suddenly. "Time fur all uv you to go to sleep,
an' I'm goin' to watch."

"I'll watch," said Henry.

"I'm the oldest, an' I'm goin' to have my way this time," said Tom.

"Needn't quarrel with me about it," said Shif'less Sol. "A lazy man like
me is always willin' to go to sleep. You kin hev my watch, Tom, every
night fur the next five years."

He ranged himself against the wall, and in three minutes was sound
asleep. Henry and Paul found room in the line, and they, too, soon
slept. Tom sat at the door, one of the captured rifles across his knees,
and watched the forest and the swamp. He saw the last flare of the
distant lightning, and he listened to the falling of the rain drops
until they vanished with the vanishing wind, leaving the forest still
and without noise.

Tom was several years older than any of the others, and, although
powerful in action, he was singularly chary of s