"You needn't ask the question, for the moment it breaks out the report of the gun and the crash of the bullet will give you a hint of the trouble."
Tim laughed.
"Yez are a bright child, as me mother used to obsarve whin I'd wash me face in her buttermilk and smiled through the windy at her. If ye continues to grow in your intellect yez may come to be a man that I won't be ashamed to addriss and take by the hand when I maats yez in the straats."
"I hope I shall," laughed Elwood, "the prize that you hold out is enough to make any boy work as he never did before. I hope you will not wish to withdraw your offer."
"Niver a faar—niver a faar, as Bridget Mughalligan said, when I asked her if she'd be kind enough to remimber me for a few days."
"Tim," added Elwood, after a moment's silence, "we are out of the woods."
"What do yez maan by that?"
"We can see signs of the presence of white men all around us, and we have nothing further to fear from Indians."
At this point Howard called the attention of his companion to a large canoe which was coming around a curve in the river. It contained nearly a dozen men, and was the largest boat of the kind which they had ever seen, and savored also of a civilized rather than a savage architect.
"They are white men," said Howard.