I no longer detested Silver Heels. I walked on tiptoe to her bench. There lay her slate and slate-pen; upon it I read a portion of the longer catechism. There, too, lay her quill and inky horn and a foolscap book sewed neatly and marked:
Felicity Warren
1774
HER BOOKE.
Poor child, doomed for years still to steep her little fingers in ink-powder while, with the powder I should require hereafter, I expected to write fiercer tales on living hides with plummets cast in bullet-moulds!
Cramped with importance, I cast a contemptuous eye upon my poem which embellished the great slate, and scoured it partly out with the buckskin.
"My books," said I, to myself, "I will bestow upon Silver Heels and Esk;" and I carried out my philanthropic impulse, piling speller, reader, and arithmetic on Esk's bench; my Cæsar, my pair of globes, my compass, and my algebra I laid with Silver Heels's copy-book, first writing in the books, with some malice:
SILVER HEELS HER GIFT BOOKE FROM
MICHAEL CARDIGAN
BE DILIGENT AND OF GOOD THRIFT
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.
For fat Peter, because I allowed Vix to bite his tight breeches, I left a pile of jacks beside his horn-book, namely, a slate-pen, three mended quills, a birchen box of ink-powder, a screw to trade with, two tops and an alley, pumice, a rule, and some wax.
Peter, though duck-limbed and half Mohawk, wrote very well in the Boston style, and could even copy in the Lettre Frisée—a poor art in some repute, but smelling to my nose of French flummery and deceit.
Having bestowed these gifts with a light heart, I walked slowly around the room, and I fear my walk was somewhat a strut.
I knew my small head was all swelled with vain imaginings; I saw myself in a flapped coat and lace, fingering the hilt of a sword at my hip, saluted by the sentries and the militia; I saw myself riding with Sir William as his deputy; I heard him say, "Mr. Cardigan, the enemy are upon us! We must fly!"—and I: "Sir William, fear nothing. The day is our own!" And I saw a lad of sixteen, with sword pointing upward and one hand twisted into Pontiac's scalp-lock, smile benignly upon Sir William, who had cast himself upon my breast, protesting that I had saved the army, and that the King should hear of it.