breeches he tied a pair of bear-skin leggins, hairy and wide;
then, he drew on over his buckskin under-shirt a bear-skin hunting-shirt
ample enough for the shoulders of Hercules, securing it at the waist
with a broad leathern belt, into which he stuck his sheathed
hunting-knife and his tomahawk, or battle-ax it might be called, it was
so ponderous. His ammunition-pouch and powder-horn--that on the
left-hand side, this on the right--he then slung over his shoulders by
two wide leathern straps, crossing each other on breast and back. Last,
he doffed his coon-skin cap and donned another of bear-skin, more
portentous still in its dimensions; and with Betsy Grumbo--his long,
black rifle; the longest, so said, in the Paradise--gleaming aslant his
shoulder, the Fighting Nigger sallied from his cabin, completely armed
and rigged for war. Giving a loud, fife-like whistle, he was instantly
joined by a huge brindled dog of grim and formidable aspect. As he
passed by the door where his mistress sat, in her mute, tearless,
motionless grief, he turned to her for a moment, cap in hand, and with
terrible sublimity said: "Miss Jemimy, you see me come back wid Bushie,
or you neber see yo' ol' nigger no mo'."

He then joined the white hunters, who by this time were ready likewise,
and led the way to the spot where he had last seen his unfortunate
little master.

Chapter V.

HOW GRUMBO FIGURED IN THE PARADISE.

The brindled dog, until his part of the work in hand should be made
known to him, stalked on with an air of grim, consequential
indifference, keeping his muzzle close under the shadow of his master's
hunting-shirt, content for the time with the little that might be seen
ahead from between the moving legs before him. Now, Grumbo--for such was
the name of the brindled dog--was a personage of consequence in his day,
and is to play a rather prominent part in our story. Therefore, it were
but due him, in memory of his great exploits, and of the signal service
which on this particular occasion he rendered the settlement, that we
draw a full-length portrait of our canine hero likewise.

Had you met his dogship in the fort, you would, at first glance, have
put him down in your mind as an uncommonly large, well-conditioned wolf,
whose habits and tastes had been so far civilized as to admit of his
tolerating the companionship of man and subsisting on a mixed diet; but
at the second glance, noting his color, and the shape of his h