“Oh!  Divil burn ye, Nick; but there’s a spice of your namesake in ye, afther all.  T’ree human crathures skinned, and you not satisfied, and so ye’ll chait a bit to make ’em four!  D’ye never think, now, of yer latther ind?  D’ye never confess?”

“T’ink every day of dat.  Hope to find more, before last day come.  Plenty scalp here; ha, Mike?”

This was said a little incautiously, perhaps, but it was said under a strong native impulse.  The Irishman, however, was never very logical or clear-headed; and three gills of rum had, by no means, helped to purify his brain.  He heard the word “plenty,” knew he was well fed and warmly clad, and just now, that Santa Cruz so much abounded, the term seemed peculiarly applicable.

“It’s a plinthiful place it is, is this very manor.  There’s all sorts of things in it that’s wanted.  There’s food and raiment, and cattle, and grain, and porkers, and praiching—­yes, divil burn it, Nick, but there’s what goes for praiching, though it’s no more like what we calls praiching than yer’e like Miss Maud in comeliness, and ye’ll own, yourself, Nick, yer’e no beauty.”

“Got handsome hair,” said Nick, surlily—­“How she look widout scalp?”

“The likes of her, is it!  Who ever saw one of her beauthy without the finest hair that ever was!  What do you get for your scalps?—­are they of any use when you find ’em?”

“Bring plenty bye’m-by.  Whole country glad to see him before long—­den beavers get pond ag’in.”

“How’s that—­how’s that, Indian?  Baiver get pounded?  There’s no pound, hereabouts, and baivers is not an animal to be shut up like a hog!”

Nick perceived that his friend was past argumentation, and as he himself was approaching the state when the drunkard receives delight from he knows not what, it is unnecessary to relate any more of the dialogue.  The jug was finished, each man very honestly drinking his pint, and as naturally submitting to its consequences; and this so much the more because the two were so engrossed with the rum that both forgot to pay that attention to the spring that might have been expected from its proximity.

Chapter V.

  The soul, my lord, is fashioned—­like the lyre. 
  Strike one chord suddenly, and others vibrate. 
  Your name abruptly mentioned, casual words
  Of comment on your deeds, praise from your uncle,
  News from the armies, talk of your return,
  A word let fall touching your youthful passion,
  Suffused her cheek, call’d to her drooping eye
  A momentary lustre, made her pulse
  Leap headlong, and her bosom palpitate.

  Hillhouse.