ess.

_Hwissss! pft! swt! cheew!_ Bones of Caesar! The arrows flitted and
clipt amongst us like a flight of bats! Dan Golby threw a
double-summersault, alighting on his head. Dory Durkee went smashing
into the fire. Jerry Hunker was pinned to the sod where he lay fast
asleep. Such dodging and ducking, and clawing about for weapons I
never saw. And such genuine Indian yelling--it chills my marrow to
write of it!

Old Nick vanished like a dream; and long before we could find our
tools and get to work we heard the desultory reports of his pistols
exploding in his holsters, as his pony measured off the darkness
between us and safety.

For some fifteen minutes we had tolerable warm work of it,
individually, collectively, and miscellaneously; single-handed, and
one against a dozen; struggling with painted savages in the firelight,
and with one another in the dark; shooting the living, and stabbing
the dead; stampeding our horses, and fighting _them_; battling with
anything that would battle, and smashing our gunstocks on whatever
would not!

When all was done--when we had renovated our fire, collected our
horses, and got our dead into position--we sat down to talk it over.
As we sat there, cutting up our clothing for bandages, digging the
poisoned arrow-heads out of our limbs, readjusting our scalps, or
swapping them for such vagrant ones as there was nobody to identify,
we could not help smiling to think how we had frightened Old Nick. Dan
Golby, who was sinking rapidly, whispered that "it was the one sweet
memory he had to sustain and cheer him in crossing the dark river into
everlasting f----." It is uncertain how Dan would have finished that
last word; he may have meant "felicity"--he may have meant "fire." It
is nobody's business.

* * * * *

JUNIPER.

He was a dwarf, was Juniper. About the time of his birth Nature was
executing a large order for prime giants, and had need of all her
materials. Juniper infested the wooded interior of Norway, and dwelt
in a cave--a miserable hole in which a blind bat in a condition of
sempiternal torpor would have declined to hibernate, rent-free.
Juniper was such a feeble little wretch, so inoffensive in his way of
life, so modest in his demeanour, that every one was disposed to love
him like a cousin; there was not enough of him to love like a brother.
He, too, was inclined to return the affection; he was too weak to love
very hard, but