"Never was there such a man!" he cried, gleefully. "He is mad, crazy! There is no appeasement. His skull is cracked by the fall, and his tobacco is gone. It is chiefly the tobacco which is lamentable."
But his skull was not cracked, for it was merely a slit of the scalp of five inches or so.
"You'll have to wait till the others come back. I can't carry." Jacob Welse pointed to his right arm, which hung dead. "Only wrenched," he explained. "No bones broken."
The baron struck an extravagant attitude and pointed down at Frona's foot. "Ah! the water, it is gone, and there, a jewel of the flood, a pearl of price!"
Her well-worn moccasins had gone rotten from the soaking, and a little white toe peeped out at the world of slime.
"Then I am indeed wealthy, baron; for I have nine others."
"And who shall deny? who shall deny?" he cried, fervently.
"What a ridiculous, foolish, lovable fellow it is!"
"I kiss your hand." And he knelt gallantly in the muck.
She jerked her hand away, and, burying it with its mate in his curly mop, shook his head back and forth. "What shall I do with him, father?"