“Fair play is all I ask, boys—­fair play, and we can lick the whole of you.  Hurra for old Carolina.  Who’s he says a word against her?  Let him stand up, and be knocked down.  How’s it, ’squire—­you an’t hurt, I reckon?  I hope not; if you are, I’ll have a shot with Rivers myself on the spot.”

But Munro interposed:  “We have had enough outcry, Forrester.  Let us have no more.  Take this young man along with you, or it will be worse for him.”

“Well, Wat Munro, all the ’squire wants is fair play—­fair play for both of us, and we’ll take the field, man after man.  I tell you what, Munro, in our parts the chickens are always hatched with spurs, and the children born with their eye-teeth.  We know something, too, about whipping our weight in wild-cats; and until the last governor of our state had all the bears killed, because they were getting civilized, we could wrestle with ’em man for man, and throw seven out of ten.”

CHAPTER XVI.

CONSPIRACY—­WARNING.

Ralph was not permitted to return to the village that night—­his sturdy friend Forrester insisting upon his occupying with him the little lodge of his own, resting on the borders of the settlement, and almost buried in the forest.  Here they conversed until a late hour, previous to retiring; the woodman entering more largely into his own history than he had done before.  He suffered painfully from the occurrences of the day:  detailed the manner in which he had been worked upon by Munro to take part in the more fearful transaction with the guard—­how the excitement of the approaching conflict had defeated his capacities of thought, and led him on to the commission of so great a part of the general offence.  Touching the initial affair with the squatters, he had no compunctious scruples.  That was all fair game in his mode of thinking, and even had blood been spilled more freely than it was, he seemed to think he should have had no remorse.  But on the subject of the murder of the guard, for so he himself called his crime, his feeling was so intensely agonizing that Ralph, though as much shocked as himself at the events, found it necessary to employ sedative language, and to forbear all manner of rebuke.

At an early hour of the morning, they proceeding in company to the village—­Forrester having to complete certain arrangements prior to his flight; which, by the advice of Colleton, he had at once determined upon.  Such, no doubt, was the determination of many among them not having those resources, in a familiarity with crime and criminal associations, which were common to Munro and Rivers.