"Off with your leather night-cap, and down with your rifle," he cried,
giving his own weapon into the hands of a looker-on, "and scrape some of
the grease off your jacket; for, 'tarnal death to me, I shall give you
the Virginny lock, fling you head-fo'most, and you'll find yourself, in a
twinkling, sticking fast right in the centre of the 'arth!"

"Thee may find theeself mistaken," said Nathan, giving up his gun to one
of the young men, but instead of rejecting his hat, pulling it down tight
over his brows. "There is locks taught among the mountains of Bedford
that may be as good as them learned on the hills of Virginia.--I am ready
for thee."

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" cried Ralph Stackpole, springing towards his man,
and clapping his hands, one on Nathan's left shoulder, the other on his
right hip: "Are you ready?"

"I am," replied Nathan.

"Down, then, you go, war you a buffalo!" And with that the captain of the
horse-thieves put forth his strength, which was very great, in an effort
that appeared to Roland quite irresistible; though, as it happened, it
scarce moved Nathan from his position.

"Thee is mistaken, friend!" he cried, exerting his strength in return,
and with an effect that no one had anticipated. By magic, as it seemed,
the heels of the captain of the horse-thieves were suddenly seen flying
in the air, his head aiming at the earth, upon which it as suddenly
descended with the violence of a bomb-shell; and there it would doubtless
have burrowed, like the aforesaid implement of destruction, had the soil
been soft enough for the purpose, or exploded into a thousand fragments,