"And yourself and I," rejoined the second.
As I turned to leave, I met again the threatening glance of the red-haired giant which sought me out across the crowd. I tapped the nearest of the pair of disgruntled citizens upon the shoulder.
"Pray, sir, who is the tall fellow in buckskin on the steps?"
The man edged away from me as suspiciously as the first one I had accosted.
"I am a stranger in your town," I added.
"'Tis a frontiersman," he replied reluctantly; "one called 'Red Jack' Bolling."
"An ugly knave," I commented.
But the citizen and his friend only eyed me askance, and I walked on, reflecting on the current of intrigue which I had uncovered beneath the placid life of the little town within two hours of my landing.
I was walking through Bridge Street, with the leafing tree-boughs overhead and the walls of Fort George before me, when another and smaller crowd rounded the corner from the Broad-Way, a street which formed the principal thoroughfare of the town and took its name from the wide space between the house-walls.
In the lead came an Indian. He was the first of his race I chanced to see, and sure, 'tis strange that we were destined to be friends—aye, more than friends, brethren of the same Clan. He was a large man, six feet in his moccasins, and of about the same age as myself. He stalked along, arms swinging easily at his side, wholly impervious to the rabble of small boys who tagged behind, yelling and shrieking at him.