He wore, it is true, a new and jaunty hunting-shirt of dressed deer-skin, as yellow as gold, and fringed and furbelowed with shreds of the same substance, dyed as red as blood-root could make them; but was otherwise, to the view, a plain yeoman, endowed with those gifts of mind only which were necessary to his station, but with the virtues which are alike common to forest and city.

Courage and hospitality, however, were then hardly accounted virtues, being too universal to be distinguished as such; and courtesy was equally native to the independent borderer.
[Footnote 1: Gen.

Andrew Lewis.] He shook the young officer heartily by the hand, a ceremony which he instantly repeated with the fair Edith; and giving them to understand that he claimed them as his own especial guests, insisted with much honest warmth, that old companionship in arms with one of their late nearest and dearest kinsmen had given him a double right to do so:-- "You must know," said he, "the good old Major your uncle, the brave old Major Roly, as we called him, Major Roland Forrester: well, K'-yaptin,--well, young lady,--my first battle war fought under his command; and an excellent commander he war; it war on the bloody Monongahela, whar the Frenchmen and Injuns trounced us so promiskous.
Perhaps you've h'ard him tell of big Tom Bruce,--for so they called me then?
I war a copporal in the first company of Rangers that crossed the river.

Lord! how the world is turning upside down! I war a copporal then, and now I'm a k'-yunnel; a greater man in commission than war ever my old Major; and the Lord, he nows, I thought my old Major Forrester war the greatest man in all Virginnee, next to the G'-yovernor and K'-yunnel George Washington! Well, you must know, we marched up the g'yully that runs from the river; and bang went the savages' g'-yuns, and smash went their hatchets; and it came to close quarters, a regular rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war behind, and the fight had made him as vicious as a wild cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and so says he to me, for I war right afore him, 'Git out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a crack at 'em!' And so I got out of his way, for I war mad at being called a damned big rascal, especially as I war doing my best, and covering him from mischief besides.

Well! as soon as I jumped out of his way, bang went his piece, and bang went another, let fly by an Injun;--down went the Major, shot right through the hips, slam-bang.