ish to do what is
right. If we _are_ poor Injins, and know but little, we know what is
right. It is right to torment so great a brave, and we mean to do it.
It is only just to you to do so. An old warrior who has seen so many
enemies, and who has so big a heart, ought not to be knocked in the
head like a pappoose or a squaw. It is his right to be tormented. We
are getting ready, and shall soon begin. If my brother can tell us a
new way of tormenting, we are willing to try it. Should we not make
out as well as pale-faces, my brother will remember who we are. We
mean to do our best, and we hope to make his heart soft. If we do
this, great will be our honor. Should we not do it, we cannot help it.
We shall try."

It was now the corporal's turn to put in a rebutter. This he did
without any failure in will or performance. By this time he was so
well warmed as to think or care very little about the saplings, and to
overlook the pain they might occasion.

"Dogs can do little but bark; 'specially Injin dogs," he said. "Injins
themselves are little better than their own dogs. They can bark, but
they don't know how to bite. You have many great chiefs here. Some
are panthers, and some bears, and some buffaloes; but where are your
weasels? I have fit you now these twenty years, and never have I known
ye to stand up to the baggonet. It's not Injin natur' to do _that_."

Here the corporal, without knowing it, made some such reproach to the
aboriginal warriors of America as the English used to throw into the
teeth of ourselves--that of not standing up to a weapon which neither
party possessed. It was matter of great triumph that the Americans
would not stand the charge of the bayonet at the renowned fight on
Breed's, for instance, when it is well known that not one man in five
among the colonists had any such weapon at all to "stand up" with. A
different story was told at Guildford, and Stony Point, and Eutaw, and
Bennington, and Bemis' Heights, and fifty other places that might be
named, after the troops were furnished with bayonets. _Then_ it was
found that the Americans could use them as well as others, and so might
it have proved with the red men, though their discipline, or mode of
fighting, scarce admitted of such systematic charges. All this,
however, the corporal overlooked, much as if he were a regular
historian who was writing to make out a case.

"Harkee, brother, since you _will_ call me brother;