The woodman, perceiving his object, made a movement, as if to bar the passage; but Jackson with great activity seized him by the wrist of the left hand, and, all-powerful as the ruffian was, sent him dancing some few yards in front of the threshold before he was aware of his intention, or could resist the peculiar _knack_ with which it was accomplished. The aide-de-camp, meanwhile, had deposited his saddle in a corner near the fire, and on his return to the door, met the inhospitable woodsman advancing as if to court a personal encounter. "Now, I'll tell you what it is, friend," he said calmly, throwing back at the same time the blanket that concealed his uniform and--what was more imposing--a brace of large pistols stuck in his belt. "You'd better have no nonsense with me, I promise you, or--" and he tapped with the fore finger of his right hand upon the butt of one of them, with an expression that could not be misunderstood. The woodsman seemed little awed by this demonstration. He was evidently one on whom it might have been dangerous for one man, however well armed, to have forced his presence, so far from every other human habitation; and it is probable that his forbearance then arose from the fact of there being two opposed to him, for he glanced rapidly from one to the other, nor was it until he seemed to have mentally decided that the odds of two to one were somewhat unequal, that he at length withdrew himself out of the doorway, as if in passive assent to the stay he could not well prevent. "Just so, my old cock," continued Jackson, finding that he had gained his point, "and when you speak of this again, don't forget to say it was a true Tennessee man, bred and born, that gave you a lesson in what no American ever wanted--hospitality to a stranger. Suppose you begin and make your self useful, by tethering and foddering old spare bones." "I reckon as how you've hands as well as me," rejoined the surly woodsman, "and every man knows the ways of his own beast best. As for fodder, they'll find it on the skirt of the wood, and where natur' planted it."