"Are you mad?" I whispered to him. "May I be scalped if you don't soon feel the weight of these five bones upon your carcass, stranger!" growled a voice, proceeding from a sort of mammoth that had just filled itself a half-pint tumbler of Monongahela. Before the double-jointed Goliath put his threat into execution, he swallowed the whisky at a gulp, and then, striding forwards, laid his open hand upon my companion's shoulder, with a force that threw the poor fellow on one side, and gave him the appearance of being crooked. At the same time the giant stared Richards in the face, with an expression which the natural hardness of his features, and the glimmer of his owl-like eyes, rendered any thing but agreeable. "The devil take the Bainbridge roadmaster--I repeat it!" cried Richards, half in earnest and half laughing, raising his muddy and bootless foot as he spoke, and placing it on a chair. "See there, men! I may thank him for the loss of my boot. The cursed swamp between here and the ferry was kind enough to pull it off for me." The roar of laughter that responded to these words would inevitably have broken the windows, had there been any glass in them. Fortunately the latter luxury was wanting; its place being supplied by fragments of old inexpressibles, and of _ci-devant_ coats and waistcoats. "Come, lads!" continued Richards, "I mean no offence; but of a surety I have to thank your bad roads for the loss of my boot." Richard's jest, exactly adapted to the society in which we found ourselves, was the most fortunate _impromptu_ that could have been hit upon. It seemed at once to have established us upon a footing of harmony and friendship with the rough backwoodsmen amongst whom we had fallen. "May I be shot like a Redskin, if that ain't Mister Richards from Old Virginny, now of the Mississippi," suddenly exclaimed the same colossus who had so recently had his hand upon Richards's shoulder, twisting, as he spoke, his wild features into a sort of amicable grin. "May I never taste another drop of rale Monongahela, if you sha'n't drink a pint with Bob Snags the roadmaster!" It was the very dignitary whom Richards had insulted with such imminent risk to his shoulder-blade. "A hurra for old Virginny!" shouted the master of the roads, biting, as he spoke, into a piece of tobacco from that famous state. "Come, mister--come, doctor!" continued the man, offering Richards with one hand a roll of tobacco, with the other a pint glassful of whisky. "Doctor!" repeated the whole assembly--"a doctor!"