When they reached the house, Nathaniel Frothingham called to Cato, who came into the hall. "Cato," he said, "get out those ebony-handled pistols, and bring them on the lawn." What fun the twins had that afternoon, and how their uncle rose in their estimation, for at the first shot the stem of a wine-glass placed against a tree-trunk had been shattered, and Uncle Nathan had turned, saying, "I have not forgotten how--eh, Daniel?" One thing the twins could not understand was why every one should be so glum over a little pistol practice, or why their aunt Clarissa should sit upstairs with her finger-tips in her ears, and her eyes red from weeping. Something unusual was in the wind, it was easy to see that, but what it was the boys could not determine. After supper they had made their way to the foundry. From the door of the smelting furnace a huge red beam shot out into the evening twilight, throwing into strong relief the figures of the workmen, who with their puddling-irons were turning the molten streams into the rough sand moulds. The twins stood there talking softly to one another. "I say, George," said William, "isn't it time we went back to the house, think ye?" "Oh, I don't know," replied the other. "Let's go around to the pond first. We'll see if there's anything in the traps." They darted out of the glare of the furnaces and climbed the fence into the road. The pond lay still and quiet in the shadowy gray light, and the twins carefully picked their way across the dam and entered a clump of alders on the other side. They had not gone more than a dozen steps when a strange apparition appeared to rise out of the very mud at their feet. A tall bent figure with long hair hanging down over its broad shoulders, a pair of deep-set, restless eyes, and a large good-humored mouth, parted in a grin. "How!" said the apparition, in a deep chest tone. The boys had recovered from their sudden start. "How, Adam!" they returned. Adam Bent Knee was one of the few surviving members of the once powerful tribe of Indians that had years before harassed the settlers of New Jersey, and had moved northward and westward before the advancing tide of civilization, leaving a few of its descendants to earn a precarious existence by fishing and trading in small ways with the whites. The boys had long known the old Indian, and had often greeted him as he passed through the woods tending his traps, or bringing strings of fish down to the settlement to be exchanged for tobacco or a few ounces of sugar. He seldom spoke to the older people, but he always had seemed glad to meet the twins. As they looked at him after he had arisen from the log on which he had been seated, they saw he held in his hands the ends of two long night-lines whose floats bobbed up and down some distance out on the surface of the pond. "Any luck this evening, Adam?" inquired George, cheerfully.