"It will go off, if you don't come ashore, sir," replied the sentry. "Hurry up!"
The Yankee—there could be no mistake as to his nationality—turned the head of the log toward the shore, and as it struck the land, began to rise slowly from the water. The sentry kept up his attitude of command so long as his Yankee friend showed only the ordinary amount of bone and muscle, but his eyes opened as foot after foot rose from the water, and the Yankee stood six feet seven in his stockings! A queer looking specimen of the genus homo he was, such as, for the good of the race, nature rarely framed. In breadth of shoulder and girth of body he was no larger than men of ordinary size, and this added to his imposing hight. His face, which did not show a particle of beard, was round, good-natured and smiling, furnished with a mouth of mighty breadth, and a nose curved like the beak of an eagle. His arms were of extraordinary length, even for so tall a man, reaching nearly to the knee. His hair was of a flaming yellow.
He was dressed in a dirty shirt of homespun, which never had known any other cleansing since first put on than that it received from the clouds or streams. A black leathern belt was strapped about his waist, but it bore no more deadly weapon than an ordinary knife. His feet were covered by moccasins rudely made and tied with buck-skin strings. Upon his head he wore a cap of beaver-skin, mangy and worn bare in spots, giving him a far from prepossessing appearance. A certain whimsical, devil-may-care air marked the fellow, which was irresistible, and the sentry laughed aloud, as the long stranger faced him on the beach. The sentry was a young man in the dress of a rifleman, with the bar of a captain on his shoulders. He was a stout-built, handsome fellow, and looked with an air of commingled amusement and astonishment, at the lofty proportions of the new-comer.
"You are a nice specimen of a prize-baby," he said, running his eyes up the long, lank body.
"Yaas, yaas! My mother always said I was a sweet little infant!" replied the Yankee. "How's all the folks?"
"Oh, they are in good health. I hope you left your own family in a good state of preservation, my long friend."
"My fam'ly allers travel with me," said the stranger. "Thar ain't so many of us so't we kin afford to sep'rate. Got a right neat little place here, ain't yew? Sort o' like the looks of it myself."
"What were you doing on that log?" demanded the sentry.
"Lord love yew, I thought you knew that! I was riding."
"Any fool knows that," replied the young man, roughly.