“Barbara,” she asked, “have you shown your cousin your ponies?” The little girl saw her motive and laughed merrily: “Why, I haven’t had time to show him anything. Come on, cousin.” The boy followed her down the steps in his noiseless moccasins, along a grass path between hedges of ancient box, around an ell, and past the kitchen and toward the stables. In and behind the kitchen negroes of all ages and both sexes were hurrying or lazing around, and each turned to stare wonderingly after the strange woodland figure of the little hunter. Negroes were coming in from the fields with horses and mules, negroes were chopping and carrying wood, there were negroes everywhere, and the lad had never seen one before, but he showed no surprise. At a gate the little girl called imperiously: “Ephraim, bring out my ponies!” And in a moment out came a sturdy little slave whose head was all black skin, black wool, and white teeth, leading two creamy-white little horses that shook the lad’s composure at last, for he knew ponies as far back as he could remember, but he had never seen the like of them. His hand almost trembled when he ran it over their sleek coats, and unconsciously he dropped into his Indian speech and did not know it until the girl asked laughingly: “Why, what are you saying to my ponies?” And he blushed, for the little girl’s artless prattling and friendliness were already beginning to make him quite human. “That’s Injun talk.” “Can you talk Indian—but, of course, you can.” “Better than English,” he smiled. Hugh had followed them. “Barbara, your mother wants you,” he said, and the little girl turned toward the house. The stranger was ill at ease with Hugh and the latter knew it. “It must be very exciting where you live.” “How?” “Oh, fighting Indians and shooting deer and turkeys and buffalo. It must be great fun.” “Nobody does it for fun—it’s mighty hard work.” “My uncle—your father—used to tell us about his wonderful adventures out there.” “He had no chance to tell me.” “But yours must have been more wonderful than his.” The boy gave the little grunt that was a survival of his Indian life and turned to go back to the house. “But all this, I suppose, is as strange to you.” “More.” Hugh was polite and apparently sincere in interest, but the lad was vaguely disturbed and he quickened his step. The porch was empty when they turned the corner of the house, but young Harry Dale came running down the steps, his honest face alight, and caught the little Kentuckian by the arm. “Get ready for supper, Hugh—come on, cousin,” he said, and led the stranger to his room and pointed to the clothes on the bed. “Don’t they fit?” he asked smiling. “I don’t know—I don’t know how to git into ’em.” Young Harry laughed joyously. “Of course not. I wouldn’t know how to put yours on either. You just wait,” he cried, and disappeared to return quickly with an armful of clothes. “Take off your war-dress,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”