“‘“I’ve never had trouble before—that is, not since the first days, when I and my dear wife landed here and began to form the plantation. Ailie was very young then. But Red Toad has ever been faithful, and has done us many a good turn. Once some pirates landed here. In two hours Red Toad had assembled his braves and cut off their retreat—and their heads too, for not one escaped alive. They are all buried here. They then seized the ship, and having landed everything useful, they burned her.”
“‘“I wonder,” I thought to myself, “what this honest fellow will think when he knows he is entertaining pirates at this very moment.”
“‘“Red Toad was a fearful savage at one time,” he continued; “but we have converted him to Christianity, and Ailie there has actually taught him to read and write.”
“‘Presently an old white-haired negro entered. “Sah,” he said, “Red Toad he ’rrive, sah. Anoder red man too, sah. Cally basket. Say he bling you one boo’ful gift.”
“‘O’More and I went out to see the chief.
“‘Certainly he was by no means prepossessing; and so tall and broad and strong was he, that he would have made a foeman worthy of any one’s steel.
“‘His English was as perfect as that of any Indian I have ever heard speak, and his politeness and apologies for the indignities which his “rascally braves” had offered to Miss O’More were both pretty and profuse.
“‘He bent his head in his hands, too, and begged most earnestly for forgiveness.
“‘“And you will punish these renegades?”