Turning his back square on his mistress, the conqueror let the rescued treasure tumble bodily from his shoulders into the eager arms, upon the yearning bosom. With incoherent expressions of endearment to her darling boy, of thanks to their brave and faithful servant, and of praise to the merciful Father of all, the widowed mother clasped the lost and found to her heart, being in turn all but choked and smothered by the hugs and kisses of the delighted Bushie. Then, hand in hand, they hastened to their cabin and shut the door behind them with a timbersome bang, which said as plainly as a puncheon-door, with oaken hinges and hickory latch, could say any thing, "Let us have the first hour of recovered happiness to ourselves." It was a sight for which full many a stern, hard eye that saw it grew for the moment the brighter, if not the clearer; and Burl, though he made a manful effort to keep it back, was forced to yield the point and let it come--the one big sob of tender and grateful feeling, which, sending a quiver through his huge frame, made his martial rigging shake and jingle like the harness of a whinnying war-horse. The hunters now gathered round the hero of the day and called upon him for an account of his adventures since parting with them at the forks of the river the day before. He told his story modestly and briefly enough, being well aware that there were those among his listeners far more learned in wood-craft than himself, and more skilled in the arts and stratagems of Indian warfare. Too magnanimous was he, though, to pass so briefly over the part his prisoner had played in the matter, dwelling at some length on the gentleness and humanity with which the young Indian had treated his little master. When he had ended, the white hunters, one and all, came up to him and shook him heartily by the hand, pronouncing him an Indian-fighter of the true grit--a compliment, in the Fighting Nigger's estimation, the highest that could be paid to mortal man, black, yellow, or white. Then, going up to the young Indian, who, leaning on his rifles, had stood the while with his bright eyes fixed serenely on some invisible quarter of the evening, they, one and all, shook him, likewise, as heartily by the hand--a dumb but eloquent expression of their grateful sense of the humanity he had shown their little friend in his hour of helpless peril and piteous need. The young brave received the demonstration with dignified composure; not, though, as if he had expected it, for, at the first greeting, he did lose his self-possessed reserve so far as to betray a little sign of great surprise.