It was, as the reader will already have conjectured, our young Englishman, who, having been guided by the Indian runner into the path to the Coshattoes, had at last succeeded in making his way over and through the innumerable swamps, rivers, and forests with which that district is so superabundantly blessed. The comparative coolness of the season, and the shallowness of the swamps and rivers, of the former of which many were entirely dried up and converted into meadows, had favoured his journey, or else he would scarcely have succeeded in reaching the banks of the Atchafalaya. For the preceding three weeks he had lived upon wild-geese and ducks, which he had killed and roasted as the Indians had taught him. He had now just emerged from the wilderness, and, however great his wish undoubtedly was to find himself once more in civilized society, the grim aspect of the Goliath-like backwoodsmen, their keen eyes and sunburnt visages, and long horn-handled knives, were so uninviting, that he was almost tempted to wish himself back again. Nevertheless, he seemed rather amused than disconcerted by the frank, forward familiarity of the people he had come amongst. "And d--n it!" exclaimed one of the men after a long pause, during which Hodges had been the observed of all eyes, "who, in the devil's name, are you? You are no Redskin?" "No, that I'm not," replied the young man, laughing; "I am an Englishman." He spoke the last words in the short decided tone, and with all the importance of a baron or count, who, having condescended to arrive in disguise amongst his dependents, on a sudden thinks proper to lay aside his incognito. There was in his look and manner, as he glanced over the crowd, a degree of self-satisfaction, and a curiosity to see the impression made by the announcement, mingled with the feeling of superiority which John Bull willingly entertains, and which he at that time was wont to display towards Brother Jonathan, but which has since entirely disappeared, and given place to a sort of envious uneasiness--a certain proof, in spite of the scorn in which it disguises itself, of his consciousness of the superiority of the detested Brother Jonathan, aforesaid. "An Englishman!" repeated twenty voices. "A Britisher!" vociferated fifty more, and amongst these a young man in a grass-green coat, who had just come up with an air of peculiar haste and importance. "A Britisher!" repeated the gentleman in green; "that's not your only recommendation, is it?" The person addressed glanced slightly at the speaker, who was measuring him with a pair of lobster-eyes of no very friendly expression, and then carelessly replied-- "For the present, it is my only one." "And d--n it, what has brought you to Opelousas?" demanded the green man. "My legs!" replied Hodges. But the joke was not well taken.