as you put them on."

"But I would not care for the boots half so much; and, if you will just
only bring me the moccasins I won't say one word about anything else you
have been promising me. I won't even ask you to get me the fur hat, nor
the red waistcoat, nor the little hunting knife, nor the little
tomahawk--nothing but the red moccasins."

The artful young rogue made this spreading display of self-denial merely
to jog his father's memory, knowing perfectly well that he was running
no risk of being taken at his word, and that by his offer of release he
should be all the more certain of receiving what had been promised him.

"Then, red moccasins shall you have, my boy!" cried the fond father,
giving his son a chum-like slap on the back. "Let me but find them in
the Old Dominion, and the red moccasins shall you have--yes, and the
boots to boot."

Of course, it never once entered Jervis Whitney's mind that so fantastic
a thing as a pair of red moccasins was to be found in the Old Dominion,
or anywhere else outside of a monkey show, though he might search the
world, with a will-o'-the-wisp, from Big Bone Lick to the Land of Nod.
So, in saying, "let me but find them, and you shall have them," he
thought he was hazarding his word no more than were he to say: "Let the
man in the moon but give me the moon, and the moon, my boy, is yours."

"Yes, pap, get him the red moccasins--do, by all means!" here put in
Elster, who had a vein of mocking pleasantry, in which she was wont to
indulge, especially whenever, as now, her fingers were busy with yarn
and knitting needles. "With a little practice he could play Indian every
whit as well as Jack Monkey, if not better; and we ought to do all we
can to bring out his talent, so that he may make a monkey of himself,
and, as he says, 'be somebody, and so happy.' So you furnish the
moccasins and the tomahawk and I will get up the rest of the rigging. I
will trim his new buckskin breeches and hunting shirt with bearskin, and
take those plumes from over the looking-glass up there, and make him as
fine a feathered hat as ever grandmother Pocahontas fixed up for
brothers. Nor shall the war paint be forgotten. I will streak and stripe
and spot his face till he looks as savage and fierce as Big Foot, the
Wyandot giant--scary enough to scare a scare-crow. Then, having so
bedaubed and bedizened him that his own looking-glass couldn't tell him
whose son he was, we will take him out, and, moun