“Ah! your father!” said the Panther, rocking the cradle.  “He and I always good friends.  ’Member when you come, your mother she got no milk for you, poor little starved thing!  My squaw she lose her baby—­nice little boy too,” said the old man, with a sigh—­“she tell your mother she nurse you; so she did.  You git fat and rosy right off.  You all the same one of us after that.  No spoil your pretty white skin, though,” said the Panther, patting Minny’s cheek with his brown fingers.  “Seem just like that happen yesterday:  now you got baby yourself.  Ah! your father—­mighty well pleased he be ’spose he see that little one.”

“How often I wish he could!” said “Minny with a sigh, for both her father and mother were dead.

“You ’pend upon it, he comfortable somewhere,” said the chief, consolingly.  “Deacon Adams, he real good man.  Look here, mamma!  Like to ask you question.  You say when we die white man go to one place, Indian go to another—­”

“I don’t say so, sir.  I don’t pretend to know all this world by heart, much less the other.”

“Well, that what Indian say, any way.  Now ’spose that so, what come of half-breed, eh?”

“What do you think?” I asked, for neither Minny nor I could venture an opinion on this abstruse point.

“Don’t know,” said the old man.  “Saw young Cherokee in Washington:  he marry pretty little schoolmistress go down there to teach, and their little boy die.  Then that young man feel bad, and he fret good deal ’bout where that baby gone to, and he ask me, and I no able tell him.  Guess me find out when get there:  no use to trouble till then, You make these?” he asked, changing the subject, and looking with admiration at the captain’s embroidered slippers which I had lent him.

“Yes.  They were pretty when they were new.  I’ll make you a pair just like them, if you wish.  Shall I?”

The old gentleman looked greatly delighted, for he was as fond of finery as any girl, and took no small pride in adorning his still handsome person.

I brought out all my embroidery-patterns, and the giant took as much pleasure as a child in the pretty painted pictures and gay-colored wools and silks.  I made all the conversation I could over the slippers, willing to divert him from the melancholy which seemed to have taken possession of his mind.  Over my work-basket he brightened a little, and chatted away quite like himself, and listened with pleasure to Minny’s singing.  We did not rise to go to bed till eleven o’clock, which was a very late hour for Maysville.  When the Panther spent the night at our house, as was frequently the case, he never would go regularly to bed, but would take his blanket and lie down before the kitchen fire.  With great politeness he insisted on getting the wood ready for morning, a thing he never would have dreamed of doing for a woman of his own race.

As he came back into the kitchen from the shed he took up his rifle, which he had set down by the door.  As he did so an angry look came over his face.  “Look here,” he said:  “somebody been spoil my rifle!”