The appearance of the great luminary was hailed with joy, as the omen of a happier fate than had been heralded by the clouds and storms of evening.  Smiles began to beam from the haggard and care-worn visages of the travellers; the very horses seemed to feel the inspiring influence of the change; and as for Roaring Ralph, the sight of his beautiful benefactress recovering her good looks, and the exulting consciousness that it was his hand which had snatched her from misery and death, produced such a fever of delight in his brain as was only to be allayed by the most extravagant expressions and actions.  He assured her a dozen times over, “he was her dog and her slave, and vowed he would hunt her so many Injun scalps, and steal her such a ’tarnal chance of Shawnee hosses, thar shorld’nt be a gal in all Kentucky should come up to her for stock and glory:”  and, finally, not content with making a thousand other promises of an equally extravagant character, and swearing, that, “if she axed it, he would go down on his knees and say his prayers to her,” he offered, as soon as he had carried her safely across the river, to “take the backtrack, and lick, single-handed, all the Injun abbregynes that might be following.”  Indeed, to such a pitch did his enthusiasm run, that, not knowing how otherwise to give vent to his over-charged feelings, he suddenly turned upon his heel, and shaking his fist in the direction whence he had come, as if against the enemy who had caused his benefactress so much distress, he pronounced a formal and emphatic curse upon their whole race, “from the head-chief to the commoner, from the whisky-soaking warrior down to the pan-licking squall-a-baby,” all of whom he anathematised with as much originality as fervour of expression; after which, he proceeded, with more sedateness, to resume his post at the head of the travellers, and conduct them onwards on their way.

Another hour was now consumed in diving amid cane-brakes and swamps, to which Roaring Ralph evinced a decidedly greater partiality than to the open forest, in which the travellers had found themselves at the dawn; and in this he seemed to show somewhat more of judgment and discretion than would have been argued from his hair-brained conversation; for the danger of stumbling upon scouting Indians, of which the country now seemed so full, was manifestly greater in the open woods than in the dark and almost unfrequented cane-brakes:  and the worthy horse-thief, with all his apparent love of fight, was not at all anxious that the angel of his worship should be alarmed or endangered, while entrusted to his zealous safe-keeping.