A strange, wild figure, in the midst of a strange, wild scene: his
clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely
with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material;
moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt
stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol to be used at close
quarters should any emergency arise.

He was a stalwart fellow, as these sons of the forest had need to
be--standing over six feet, and with a muscular development to
match his stately height. His tawny hair had been darkened by
exposure to hot suns, and his handsome face was deeply imbrowned
from the influences of weather in all seasons. His blue eyes had
that direct yet far-away look which comes to men who live face to
face with nature, and learn to know her in all her moods, and to
study her caprices in the earning of their daily bread.

Humphrey Angell was not more than twenty years of age, and he had
lived ten years in the forest. He had come there as a child with
his father, who had emigrated in his young life from England to the
settlement of Pennsylvania, and had afterwards become one of the
scattered settlers on the debatable ground between the French and
English borders, establishing himself in the heart of the boundless
forest, and setting to work with the utmost zeal and industry to
gather round himself a little farmstead where he could pass his own
later years in peace, and leave it for an inheritance to his two
sons.

Humphrey could remember Pennsylvania a little, although the life in
the small democratic township seemed now like a dream to him. All