and taking up a position on the right of the table which lay between himself and Gerald, let it fall upon the dry clay hearth, with a violence that caused the settler to quit his attitude of abstraction for one of anger and surprise. "Sorry to disturb you, friend," he said, "but these chairs of yours are so cursed heavy, there's no handling them decently; 'specially with cold fingers." "Beggars, I reckon, have no right to be choosers," returned the settler; "the chairs is quite good enough for me--and no one axed you to sit on 'em." "I'll tell you what it is, old cock," continued the Aide-de-camp, edging his seat closer, and giving his host a smart friendly slap upon the thigh, "this dull life of yours don't much improve your temper. Why, as I am a true Tennessee man, bred and born, I never set eyes upon such a crab-apple in all my life--you'd turn a whole dairy of the sweetest milk that ever came from prairie-grass sour in less than no time. I take it you must be crossed in love, old boy--eh?" "Crossed in hell," returned the settler, savagely; "I reckon as how it don't consarn you whether I look sour or sweet--what you want is a night's lodgin', and you've got it--so don't trouble me no more." "Very sorry, but I shall," said Jackson, secretly congratulating himself that, now he had got the tongue of his host in motion, he had a fair chance of keeping it so. "I must trouble you for some bread, and whatever else your larder may afford. I'll pay you honestly for it, friend." "I should guess," said the settler, his stern features brightening for the first time into a smile of irony, "as how a man who had served a campaign agin the Ingins and another agin the British, might contrive to do without sich a luxury as bread. You'll find no bread here, I reckon." "What, not even a bit of corn bread? Try, my old cock, and rummage up a crust or two, for hung beef is devilish tight work for the teeth, without a little bread of some sort for a relish." "If you'd ha' used your eyes, you'd ha' seen nothin' like a corn patch for twenty mile round about this. Bread never entered this hut since I have been here. I don't eat it." "More's the pity," replied Jackson, with infinite drollery; "but though you may not like it yourself, your friends may." "I _have_ no friends--I _wish_ to have no friends!" was the sullen reply. "More's the pity still," pursued the Aide-de-camp. "But what do you live on, then, old cock, if you don't eat bread?" "Human flesh. Take that as a relish to your hung beef."