hair above it, and a red hood that had evidently been in the rain.
"Looking out for me, I wonder?" he asked himself, and as this glow of
agitated speculation swept over him the men who plied him with questions
angrily admonished his silence.

"He has seen a wolf! He has seen a wolf! 'Tis plain!" cried old Mivane,
as he stood in his metropolitan costume among the buckskin-clad
pioneers. "One would know that without being told!"

"You shot the wolf and stampeded the cattle, and the herders at the
cow-pens on the Keowee River can't round them up again!" cried one of
the settlers.

"The cattle have run to the Congarees by this time!" declared another
pessimistically.

"And it was _you_ that shot the wolf!" cried "X" rancorously.

"The herders are holding _us_ responsible and have sent an ambassador,"
explained John Ronackstone, anxiously knitting his brows, "to inform us
that not a horse of the pack-train from Blue Lick Station shall pass
down to Charlestown till we indemnify them for the loss of the cattle."

"Gadso! they can't _all_ be lost!" exclaimed old Mivane floutingly.

"No, no! the herders go too far for damages--too far! They are putting
their coulter _too_ deep!" said a farmer fresh from the field. He had
still a bag of seed-grain around his neck, and now and again he thrust
in his hand and fingered the kernels.