"Whar's that horse you promised me, cunnel? I'm a licked man, and I can't
stay here no longer, no way no how. Lend me a hoss, cunnel, and trust to
my honour."

"You shall have a beast," said Bruce, coolly; "but as to trusting your
honour, I shall do no such thing, having something much better to rely
on. Tom will show you a horse; and, remember, you are to leave him at
Logan's. If you carry him a step further, captain, you'll never carry
another. Judge Lynch is looking at you; and so bewar'."

Having uttered this hint, he left the captian of horse-thieves to digest
it as he might, and stepped up to Nathan, who had seated himself on a
stump, where, with his skins at his side, his little dog and his rifle
betwixt his legs, he sat enduring a thousand sarcastic encomiums on his
strength and spirit, with as many sharp denunciations of the peaceful
principles that robbed the community of the services he had shown himself
so well able to render. The doctrine, so eloquently avowed by Captain
Ralph, that it was incumbent upon every able-bodied man to fight the
enemies of their little state, the murderers of their wives and children,
was a canon of belief imprinted on the heart of every man in the
district; and Nathan's failure to do so, however caused by his
conscientious aversion to bloodshed, no more excused him from contempt
and persecution in the wilderness, than it did others of his persuasion
in the Eastern republics, during the war of the revolution. His
appearance, accordingly, at any Station, was usually the signal for
reproach and abuse; the fear of which had driven him almost altogether
from the society of his fellowmen, so that he was seldom seen among them,
except when impelled by necessity, or when his wanderings in the woods
had acquainted him with the proximity of the foes of his persecutors. His
victory over the captain of horse-thieves exposed him, on this occasion,