That any one even unarmed could have conceived fear from such a poor weak object as I was seemed so utterly absurd that I laughed outright; an emotion on my part that seemingly imparted but little confidence to my friend the captain, who retreated still closer to the door, and seemed ready for flight. The first use I could make of speech, however, was, to assure him that I was not only perfectly calm and sensible, but deeply grateful for kindness which I knew not how, nor to whom, I became indebted. “Don't roll your eyes there; don't look so damned treacherous!” said he. “Keep down your hands; keep them under the bedclothes. I 'll put a bullet through your skull if you stirred!” I again protested that any manifestation of quietness he asked for I would immediately comply with, and begged him to sit down beside me and tell me where I was and how I had come hither. Having established an outwork of a table and two chairs between us, and cautiously having left the door ajar to secure his retreat, he drew the scymitar and placed it before him, his eyes being fixed on me the entire time. “Well,” said he, as he assumed a seat, and leaned his arm on the table, “so you are quiet at last. Lord, what a frightful lunatic you were! Nobody would approach your bed but me. The stoutest keeper of Swift's Hospital fled from the spot; while I said, 'Leave him to me, the human eye is your true agent to humble the pride of maniacal frenzy.'” With these words he fixed on me a look such as the chief murderer in a melodrama assumes at the moment he proceeds to immolate a whole family. “You infernal young villain, how I subdued you! how you quailed before me!” There was something so ludicrous in the contrast of this bravery with his actual terror, that again I burst out a-laughing; upon which he sprang up, and brandishing his sabre, vowed vengeance on me if I stirred. After a considerable time spent thus, I at last succeeded in impressing him with the fact, that if I had all the will in the world to tear him to pieces, my strength would not suffice to carry me to the door,--an assurance which, however sorrowfully made by me, I perceived to afford him the most unmixed satisfaction. “That's right, quite right,” said he; “and mad should he be indeed who would measure strength with me. The red men of Tuscarora always called me the 'Great Buffalo.' I used to carry a bark canoe with my squaw and nine little black devils under one arm, so as to leave the other free for my tomahawk. 'He, how, he!' that 's the war step.” Here he stooped down to his knees, and then sprang up again, with a yell that actually made me start, and brought a new actor on the scene in the person of Anna Maria, whose name I had so frequently heard the night before. “What is the matter?” said the lady, a short, squablike woman, of nearly the captain's age, but none of his personal attractions. “We can't have him screaming all day in that fashion.”