buying, and living large; but that can't last for ever. I saw him first
at a muster. I was then just eighteen, and went out with the rest, for
the first time. Maybe, 'squire, I didn't take the rag off the bush that
day. I belonged to Captain Williams's troop, called the 'Bush-Whackers.'
We were all fine-looking fellows, though I say it myself. I was no
chicken, I tell you. From that day, Mark Forrester wrote himself down
'_man_' And well he might, 'squire, and no small one neither. Six feet
in stocking-foot, sound in wind and limb--could outrun, outjump,
outwrestle, outfight, and outdo anyhow, any lad of my inches in the
whole district. There was Tom Foster, that for five long years counted
himself cock of the walk, and crowed like a chicken whenever he came out
upon the ground. You never saw Tom, I reckon, for he went off to
Mississippi after I sowed him up. He couldn't stand it any longer, since
it was no use, I licked him in sich short order: he wasn't a mouthful.
After that, the whole ground was mine; nobody could stand before me,
'squire; though now the case may be different, for Sumter's a destrict,
'squire, that a'n't slow at raising game chickens."

At the close of this rambling harangue, Mark Forrester, as we may now be
permitted to call him, looked down upon his own person with no small
share of complacency. He was still, doubtless, all the man he boasted
himself to have been; his person, as we have already briefly described
it, offering, as well from its bulk and well-distributed muscle as from
its perfect symmetry, a fine model for the statuary. After the
indulgence of a few moments in this harmless egotism, he returned to the
point, as if but now recollected, from which he set out.

"Well, then, Master Colleton, as I was saying, 'twas at this same muster
that I first saw the 'squire. He was a monstrous clever old buck now, I
tell you. Why, he thought no more of money than if it growed in his