Merry’s Adventures. CHAPTER XVII. I cannot easily make my readers, who have always lived in cities or towns, understand the pleasure of sleeping in the woods, with no roof but the sky. Perhaps most persons would think this a hardship, and so it would be, if we had to do it always: but by way of adventure now and then, and particularly when one is about seventeen, with such a clever fellow as Mat Olmsted for a companion and a guide, the thing is quite delightful. The affair with the panther had excited my fancy, and filled my bosom with a deep sense of my own importance. It seemed to me that the famous exploits of Hercules, in Greece, which are told by the old poets, were, after all, such things as I could myself achieve, if the opportunity only should offer. Occupied with these thoughts, I assisted Mat in collecting some fagots for our night fire--but every moment kept looking around, expecting to see some wild animal peeping his face between the trunks of the gray old oaks. In one instance I mistook a stump for a bear’s head, and in another I thought a bush at a little distance, was some huge monster, crouching as if to spring upon us. The night stole on apace, and soon we were surrounded with darkness, which was rendered deeper by the fire we had kindled. The scene was now, even more wild than before: the trees that stood around, had the aspect of giants, lifting their arms to the sky;--and their limbs often assumed the appearance of serpents, or demons, goggling at us from the midnight darkness. Around us was a seeming tent, curtained with blackness, through which not a ray of light could penetrate. I amused myself for a long time, in looking at these objects, and I remarked that they assumed different aspects at different times--a thing which taught me a useful lesson, and which I will give, gratis, to my young readers. It is this, that fancy, when indulged, has the power to change objects to suit its own wayward humor. Whoever wishes to be guided right, ought, therefore, to beware how he takes fancy for a guide. When our fire had been burning for about half an hour, Matthew having unbuckled his pack, took out some dried deer’s flesh, upon which we made a hearty supper: we then began to talk about one thing and another, and, finally, I spoke of the Indians, expressing my curiosity to know more about them. Upon this, Mat said he would tell an Indian story, and accordingly, he proceeded nearly as follows: