Now, you must know that our hero, though tough to reproof, was keenly sensitive to ridicule--a jimson weed to that, a snap dragon to this. Having discovered his weakness, his mother was much in the habit of playing upon it, as the only means of persuasion or dissuasion within her command which was likely to make any impression upon his knotty young rind. So, while she was spinning out her rigmarole, Sprigg was making a great show of amusing himself with Pow-wow, slapping him over the muzzle with his coonskin cap, or setting that ornament in divers ways on the old dog's head; now with the tail over the right ear, then over the left, or over the nose; the young sauce-box the while keeping up, in a confidential undertone to his four-footed chum, a running commentary on his mother's burlesque of himself, for every word of which he should have received a sounding spank. "Some folks think they are monstrous smart, don't they, Pow-wow?" "You could bark tip a tree and do better than that, couldn't you, Pow-wow?" "Funny enough to make a dog laugh, isn't it, Pow-wow?" "Some folks ought to be told what fools they are, oughtn't they, Pow-wow?" "Ding-dong bell, when the fools are all dead, Then we will have plenty of butter and bread, won't we, Pow-wow?" CHAPTER III. Meets with the Object of His Love. So, next Monday, Jervis Whitney set out on his long tramp, with Pow-wow for company, and with Black Bess, his rifle, to keep them supplied with game, their chief dependence for subsistence while traveling the five hundred miles of wilderness, which lay between them and their old home beyond the Alleghenies. While they were gone, Sprigg kept count of the months and weeks and days, and, as they went silently gliding by, he went silently dreaming on about the red moccasins. Silently, for never another word said he to his mother concerning the matter he had so near at heart. He knew she would laugh at him, and call him a monkey--our hero, bear in mind, being as touchy to ridicule as a raw mouth to ginger. You might scold him and rate him, sneap him and snub him, to a degree you would suppose sufficient to break the heart of any boy who knew his catechism, yet not a fig nor a flint would he care for it all. Perhaps, he would kick up his heels in the very face of your reproof; or, it may be, merely wrinkle up his saucy young knob of a nose, thereby saying as plainly as words could say it: "Thin! thin! When the wise waste words, then fools may grin, So, save your breath for a rainy day, Or the wind will blow it all away; Bottle it up and cork it fast, The longer you keep it, the longer 'twill last."