At this Benny stood speechless, and Fanny set up such a cry to go home that Benny was afraid he should have to take her away--that is, if the Witch would let him. He began to consider his chances. Still the more terrible the old Witch seemed, the more Benny wanted to see and hear her. He whispered to Fanny: "_She_ won't hurt you, Pettikins--she _can't_; I won't let her. Hush a minute, and see what I'm going to say to her!" Fanny hushed a little, and Benny fixed an audacious gaze upon the Witch--or a gaze which he meant should be audacious. "What _is_ the matter with you?" said he. The old woman removed her pipe and sat holding it with her forefinger lapped over it like a hook. "They call it 'exterminated,'" said she, pushing back the broad-brimmed, high-crowned man's hat that she wore, and showing her gray, ragged locks. "I'm exterminated. You don't know what that is, I s'pose?" "Exterminated, ex-_ter_-min-ated," said Benny, scratching his head, "why, to--to--drive out--to--ah--put an end to--to--to--destroy utterly." "I don't know what your book meaning is. I didn't get mine from books. I got it all the way along--began to get it when I wasn't much bigger'n that little gell," said the Witch, pointing at Fanny with her pipe. "I didn't know what it meant when I first heard it, but I know now. Hoo-oo-oo-oo!" "I wish you'd tell us about it," said Benny. "Tell us about beginning to learn it when you wa'n't much bigger'n Pettikins." "That's when the colonel said we must move west'ard," said the witch, laying her pipe down on the log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and resting her bony jaws in the palms of her hands. "Injuns, before they're exterminated, stick to their homes like other folks." [Illustration: THEY ENCOUNTER THE WITCH.] "You ain't an _Injun_, be you!" gasped Benny, with a look and tone which expressed volumes of consternation and disappointment at her utter failure to come up to his ideal Indian. Why, she wasn't the least bit like the pictures! She wasn't like the magnificent figures he had seen in front of the cigar stores in New Haven. Where were all her feathers and things--her red and yellow tunic, her gorgeous moccasons, her earrings and noserings and bracelets and armlets and beads? Why, she was ju-u-u-ust as ragged and dirty! All this and more Benny's tone expressed when he said: "Why, you ain't an _Injun_, be you?" "Well, I _was_. I ain't nothing at all now. I ain't even a squaw, and they _said_ they was going to make a Christian on me. I _was_ a Chetonquin." "Oh, yes," said Benny, looking at her now with the interest attaching to one who _had_ worn the feathers, and beads, and moccasons, and rings. "Well, what did you do when the colonel told you to go West?" "We had a fight." That was satisfactory to Benny. "Which whipped?" he asked, with his own native briskness, as if this, now, was common ground, and he was ready to talk at his ease.