"I passed him as he lay dead, with his sword in his hand, his fine ruffled shirt and silk waistcoat drenched with blood--by the bye, there was a pretty girl's miniature, with powdered hair peeping out of it too. 'Ho, ho!' thought I, as I gave him a hearty kick; 'you will never again have me tied neck-and-heels for not wearing spectacles on sentry, or get me a hundred lashes, for not having my queue dressed straight to the seam of my coat." "Horrible!" said Ewen. "I will wager my wooden leg against your two of flesh and bone, that your officer would have been served in the same way, if he had given you the same provocation." "Heaven forbid!" said Ewen. "Ha, ha, ha! Ho, ho, ho!" cried Wooden-leg. "You spoke of an Indian warrior," said Ewen, uneasily, as the atrocious anecdotes of this hideous old man excited his anger and repugnance; "then you have served, like myself, in the New World?" "Fire and smoke! I should think so, but long before your day." "Then you fought against the Cherokees?" "Yes." "At Warwomans Creek?" "Yes; I was killed there." "You were--what?" stammered Ewen. "Killed there." "Killed?" "Yes, scalped by the Cherokees; dam! don't I speak plain enough?" "He is mad," thought Ewen. "I am not mad," said Wooden-leg gruffly. "I never said so," urged Ewen. "Thunder and blazes! but you thought it, which is all the same." Ewen was petrified by this remark, and then Wooden-leg, while fixing his hyæna-like eye upon him, and mixing a fresh can of his peculiar grog, continued thus,--