and brought their fodder from the wagon. Later, as the sun was setting,
he lit a corn-cob pipe, and somewhat ostentatiously strolled down the
road, with a furtive eye lingering upon the still open door of the
farmhouse. Presently two angular figures appeared from it, the farmer
and his wife, intent on barter.

These he received with his previous gloomy preoccupation, and a slight
variation of the story he had told their daughter. It is possible
that his suggestive indifference piqued and heightened the bargaining
instincts of the woman, for she not only bought the skillet, but
purchased a clock and a roll of carpeting. Still more, in some effusion
of rustic courtesy, she extended an invitation to him to sup with them,
which he declined and accepted in the same embarrassed breath, returning
the proffered hospitality by confidentially showing them a couple of
dried scalps, presumably of Indian origin. It was in the same moment
of human weakness that he answered their polite query as to "what they
might call him," by intimating that his name was "Red Jim,"--a title of
achievement by which he was generally known, which for the present must
suffice them. But during the repast that followed this was shortened to
"Mister Jim," and even familiarly by the elders to plain "Jim." Only
the young girl habitually used the formal prefix in return for the "Miss
Phoebe" that he called her.

With three such sympathetic and unexperienced auditors the gloomy
embarrassment of Red Jim was soon dissipated, although it could hardly
be said that he was generally communicative. Dark tales of Indian
warfare, of night attacks and wild stampedes, in which he had always
taken a prominent part, flowed freely from his lips, but little else
of his past history or present prospects. And even his narratives of
adventure were more or less fragmentary and imperfect in detail.