"'Poor fellow!' said Elsie, her sympathy for the anticipated sufferings of her young protegé driving from her mind all disapprobation of the hard-hearted perverseness that caused them, 'did they keep you long in that dismal, dreadful place?' 'You may say so,' replied the boy; 'they kept me down there till I was more tired of it than ever I had been of the grammar-school. I don't know how long it was, but I was mighty tired of it. Dickens, goody, but I was dry! I was in such a hurry to get down, that I forgot I should want water as well as gingerbread: I eat up all my gingerbread, but I was as dry as ever. Goody, you don't know what it is to be dry! I was always thinking and dreaming of springs, and wells, and pumps, and the big Delaware there, and even the ditches and gutters. But I held out as well as I could, till I thought we were clear of that hateful old England; and then I hollaed to 'em to let me out; but they did not hear me at all. There was a power of big baskets, that were rolled all about me; for you must know, a ship never holds still a minute at a time, but is always pitching and tumbling, now up and now down, like a cart in a corn-field; so the baskets rolled all over me; I thought they would have squeezed the life out of me, and I could not get out from among them. So there I pulled and hollaed, till I was tired of it, or fell asleep; but no good came of it. I tell you what, goody, I would have taken a thumping for a drink of water! but there was no coming at it. I bawled out, "Water! water!" and "Fire! fire!" but it was no good; nobody heard me; and it set me to crying, to think what a hard time I had of it. Well, I reckon!—I was scraping about among the baskets, and some gave way, they were so rotten. I scraped among the willow twigs, and got my hand among the straw, without so much as thinking what I was about, when, all of a sudden, I found I had hold of a glass bottle. "Oho!" said I; it was a great long-necked thing, with wax over the cork. I did not mind that; I knocked the neck off against the basket, and, good dickens! such a fizzing and spluttering as it made! It foamed all over my face, and some fell on my lips, and it tasted good, like cider—you may be sure I drained it.' 'It was wine!' cried Elsie. 'I reckon,' said the juvenal; 'and I reckon it made my head sing, too!' he exclaimed, smacking his lips over the grateful recollection; 'such stuff as that I never tasted before. It made me feel good,—all comical, and merry, and ticklish-like,—I don't know how, but all as if I was rolling up hill and down hill,—huzzy-buzzy, sleek, and grand! Then I seemed as if I was dreaming, but such merry dreams, and talking, and roaring, and laughing; and then some of them opened the traps, and dragged me out; and then I had a tussle with some of them, for I felt big enough to fight them all; and then somehow I fell fast asleep.'
"'When I came to, the captain said I was drunk, and he beat me: it was worse than the grammar-man. First, he thumped me for stealing into the ship, then for putting him to a bother, and then for drinking his cider, or champagne, as he called it.' 'He beat you, the villain!' cried Elsie; 'and you the son of Thomas Gilbert!' 'He did,' said the boy, with edifying coolness; 'he treated me like a dog, and he thumped me every day. I suppose the grammar-man could not have been harder on me than the captain of that big ship—they called her the Prince of Whales, for, you must know, a whale is a very big fish; but I could never get a peep at one. Goody! I never was so mauled in my life! If I crawled about the quarter-deck, as they call it, (because that's a place where the ship-boys never get any quarter,) why the captain cuffed me off; and it was pretty much the same with the mates, for they cuffed too, and every now and then, some one or other beat me with a rope's end, because I would not go up the ropes, or do any thing else to make myself useful. I never did believe a Christian man's son could be treated so! but that's the way they treat boys on board a ship, only that the regular ship-boys were not handled so hard. They all beat me, captain, sailors, and all; the cook boxed my ears when I went to the caboose;—and if I hid on the forecastle, as they call it, the sailors run me up a rope and plumped me into the sea; and even the ship-boys tried their hands at me, but I reckon they got as much as they gave. They all beat me but Jackey Jones, an old fellow that had but one eye; and if it had not been for him, I believe they would have killed, or starved, or drowned me among them. One night he was washed overboard: and after that I was beat worse than ever. It was a great storm, goody; I reckon you don't know what a storm is, ashore, even when the trees are snapping; I tell you what, the sea was boiling up, just like a big pot, and the ship danced about just like an apple-dumpling; all the difference was, the water was not hot. They were all big cowards, for all they had been so big with me; and down they went on their knees, crying and praying, like methodist preachers. The captain was white all over the mouth, the chief mate got drunk, and Big George, a sailor that used to be hard on me, came to ask my pardon for treating me so badly. I told him, we should have a reckoning about that some other time; and that night he was washed overboard, along with Jackey Jones, and we saw them no more. I tell you what, goody! it was the happiest time I had aboard that ship; for I supposed it would sink, and drown 'em all; which was a great satisfaction for me to think on. However, it cleared up again next day; and if we had not soon reached Philadelphy, I don't know what would have become of me; for they were all worse than ever, especially the captain.' 'And that wretch,' cried Elsie; 'did no one punish him for his cruel and barbarous oppression of a poor, friendless boy?' 'You shall hear,' replied the urchin, with a grin that might have adorned the visage of an Indian coming out of battle, with a sack full of scalps; 'he was for fastening me up when we came to the wharf at Philadelphy, to see his merchant, and learn what was to be done with me. But I sneaked away, when he was gone, and hid among some barrels, till he came back. Then I watched him come out of the ship again, and ran to a corner, where there was a bundle of green hoop-poles, at a cooper's shop. Well, goody, I took one of the hoop-poles; and when he passed by, down it went, and down went the captain, too, like a butchered ox, with a great yell like a school-boy, that brought the people up. However, I gave him two more, for as long as I had time; and then I had to scurry for it.' 'Good heavens!' cried Elsie, 'perhaps you killed him!' 'Well, if I didn't, I'm sure it was all the fault of the people that ran up so fast, so that I had not time. As for the rest of them, if I ever catch any of them up here among the hills, you may reckon what will come of it.' And as he spoke, he raised his eyes to an old musket, hanging on the wall, and nodded his head significantly.
"This," said the merry narrator, "is the very story I had from Elsie's lips, only that she spoiled it in telling; and I leave you to judge whether there was ever a more exquisite young savage in the whole world, than that same Oran Gilbert."
"Never, truly," said Miss Falconer, upon whom perhaps the unusual, yet natural, vivacity of her friend, had produced a still more pleasant impression than the story itself. "This Oran must have been the Paladin, the Orlando, the very Tom Thumb, of Hawk-Hollow;
'Though small his body,
Yet was his soul like any mountain big;'
and verily, if the other Hawks, callow or full fledged, were of the same colour and quality, you have begun the most diverting story in all your budget. Pr'ythee go on; there is a magic in the whole affair; for, while you speak it, it makes the teller herself again. Methinks you are now the same merry Kate I knew a year ago,—the bright Kate, no longer 'kerchieft in a cloud,' as Milton says,—the gay Kate, the madcap Kate, the Brandywine Kate"——
"Not a word about Brandywine, if you will have me play the fool longer," said Miss Loring, hurriedly. "And after all, there is nothing more to tell—that is, nothing more funny; and, after all, too, there was nothing funny in the sufferings of that poor, headstrong, vindictive boy; absurdity enough, I grant you, there was; but it was my wicked and hard heart that made me travesty an anecdote that poor Elsie considered serious enough."
She then went on to speak of the return of the boy's father, the building of the manor-house, the second marriage of Mr. Gilbert, and the exploits of his children. The peculiar temper of Oran soon determined the course of his life. While yet a boy of sixteen, he had extended his rambles over the mountains into the Wyoming valley, then occupied by two clans of Shawnee and Delaware Indians, who were often at feud together. "Among these barbarians," said the lady, "the young white Indian, for such he must be esteemed, fought his first battle, and took his first scalp. It was in the Grasshopper War"——
"The what?" cried Miss Falconer.
"Why, Hal, the Grasshopper War I call it," said Catherine, "out of tenderness to our sex; but all others call it the Squaw War. It was waged between those rival tribes I spoke of. The women of the two clans met together in a strawberry field, where they gathered fruit in company, very pacifically I doubt not, except a little scolding at one another. The children employed themselves, in the meanwhile, chasing grasshoppers; when, unfortunately, two boys belonging to different tribes pounced together upon a magnificent insect, that was perhaps the emperor of the field, and contended for the possession of the prize. Up ran the mother of the Delaware, and boxed the young Shawnee's ears; the Shawnee parent ran to avenge her child; and others immediately taking part, in a few moments the whole field was in an uproar: such scratching, scolding, and pulling of caps, were perhaps never heard of before. Out ran the men from their villages to help their wives, and to it they went pell-mell; and the war, thus begun, did not end until hundreds had been slain on both sides, and the Shawnees entirely driven from the valley. The less we say of this war, the better; for I heard it instanced as one small proof out of a thousand better, that men never fall by the ears, without the women being at the bottom of the contention. The Delawares, with whom Oran fought, made much of him, gave him a name which signifies the Boy Warrior, and formally adopted him into their tribe. As his brothers grew up around him, he enticed them one by one into the woods, and made them as wild as himself; and by and by, when those dreadful Indian wars, that followed after the defeat of General Braddock, extended over the whole western country, and even east of the Susquehanna, he acquired a singular reputation as a bold and successful scalp-hunter. I don't know what else to call him; he was not a soldier, for he never could be prevailed upon to go out with any body of soldiers, under the command of regular governmental officers. He went with his brothers, and seldom allowed even a neighbour to join his little party, though this was an object with all who knew him; for none of the Gilberts having ever been seriously wounded in any of their mad enterprises, the people had a superstitious belief that good luck and safety went with them.