“And that is it, watch-dog,” returned Peg, in a way of mourning. “I am not tame; I am like the wild things that will not bear a cage. Now here; see how strange I am. I do not like women; I will not trust one with a word; I must watch myself to treat them with a fair face. Then I am all to talk and go about with men. I should have been born one of those Indian girls of whom you told me. A campfire and a petticoat of buckskin, a wigwam and a husband--big and broad like you, watch-dog--to fight and to hunt for me; that would be my dream.” There arose a rough laugh, and if my ears were true, a rum-sodden laugh. I turned my head, and there, a hundred yards to our rear, came rolling and stumbling the drunken crew whom Noah had been at pains to show me in the Indian Queen. Over my shoulder I watched them for a moment. They were in sottish glee, and would shout, and now and then troll a bar or two of some pot-house ballad. My nature was on watch in a moment; I suspected how these ruffians would be after us. We were in a lonely strip of trees, and no folk near the spot but just ourselves--a safe theatre for villainy. I counted our roaring drunkards; there were eleven, and among them I could pick out the yard-wide shoulders of that gladiator to whom Noah had pointed. Peg, as well as I, could see these creatures coming; but then she had not my news, and would only know them for roysterers returning from some drinking bout. I glanced at Peg; her face was bright and free, and for all her late lamentations over society and its dead cold wastes of proper snow, mighty wide awake and vivacious. I never beheld her more brisk; in the white moonlight her picture shone out as clear as day. Peg was on my right arm. I began to go more slowly so that those who followed should overtake us, and to push a little off the path to the right, for I would have Peg out of the midst of them when trouble fell. As I would loiter and go with a slower foot, the eleven behind quickened their step. They came on, roaring and jesting among themselves; not together, but by twos and threes, and straggling along the path like geese. I think it was their plan to push ahead of Peg and me and bar our way; for they went lumbering and lurching by, making a rude joke to toss from tongue to tongue, but no one to so much as look on us direct until the last one came up. He would be lagging behind for a purpose, too, since he was gone on no more than a yard ahead of Peg and myself when he sings out to his fellows with an oath: “D'ye see whom we have here? Why, here is our big lover and his light o' love--no less!” With that, stepping before Peg, I seized the scoundrel with my left hand. It was his arm above the elbow I took hold on, and a soft snick like a snapping of the clay stem of a pipe, and the grotesque way in which the hand dangled, palm outward, showed me how I had broken the bone.