every moment, with a vigour and apparent carelessness well fitted to discompose a nervous person, had any such happened among his auditors. As if there was not enough in his figure, visage, and attire to move the mirth of beholders, he added to his other attractions a variety of gestures and antics of the most extravagant kinds, dancing, leaping, and dodging about, clapping his hands and cracking his heels together, with the activity, restlessness, and, we may add, the grace, of a jumping-jack. Such was the worthy, or unworthy, son of Salt River, a man wholly unknown to history, though not to local and traditionary fame, and much less to the then inhabitants of Bruce's Station, to whom he related his news of the Jibbenainosay with that emphasis and importance of tone and manner which are most significantly expressed in the phrase of "laying down the law." As soon as he saw the commander of the station approaching, he cleared the throng around him by a skip and a hop, seized the colonel by the hand, and doing the same with the soldier, before Boland could repel him, as he would have done, exclaimed, "Glad to see you, cunnel;--same to you, strannger--What's the news from Virginnie? Strannger, my name's Ralph Stackpole, and I'm a ring-tailed squealer!" "Then, Mr. Ralph Stackpole, the ring-tailed squealer," said Roland, disengaging his hand, "be so good as to pursue your business, without regarding or taking any notice of me." "'Tarnal death to me!" cried the captain of horse-thieves, indignant at the rebuff, "I'm a gentleman, and my name's _Fight_! Foot and hand, tooth and nail, claw and mudscraper, knife, gun, and tomahawk, or any other way you choose to take me, I'm your man! Cock-a-doodle-doo!" And with that the gentleman jumped into the air, and flapped his wings, as much to the amusement of the provoker of his wrath as of any other person present. "Come, Ralph," said the commander of the Station, "whar'd' you steal that brown mar' thar?"--a question whose abruptness somewhat quelled the ferment of the man's fury, while it drew a roar of laughter from the lookers-on. "Thar it is!" said he, striking an attitude and clapping a hand on his breast, like a man who felt his honour unjustly assailed. "Steal! _I_ steal any horse but an Injun's! Whar's the man dar's insinivate that? Blood and massacree-ation! whar's the man?" "H'yar," said Bruce, very composedly. "I know that old mar' belongs to Peter Harper, on the north side." "You're right, by Hooky!" cried Roaring Ralph; at which seeming admission of his knavery the merriment of the spectators was greatly increased; nor was it much lessened when the fellow proceeded to aver that he had borrowed it, and that with the express stipulation that it should be left at Bruce's Station, subject to the orders of its owner. "Thar, cunnel," said he, "thar's the beast; take it; and just tell me whar's the one you mean to lend me,--for I must be oft afore sunset."