"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 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 Aid-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." Scarcely had the strange confession escaped the settler's lips, when Jackson, active as a deer, was at the farther end of the hut, one hand holding the heavy chair as a shield before him, the other placed upon the butt of one of his pistols. The settler at the same moment quitted his seat, and stretching his tall and muscular form to its utmost height, burst into a laugh that sounded more like that of some wild beast than a human being. The involuntary terror produced in his guest was evidently a source of exultation to him, and he seemed gratified to think he had at length discovered the means of making himself looked upon with something like fear.