“Oh! he’s good company, sometimes, Mike.  When you know him better, you’ll like him better.  Come; up with the bundles, and let us follow.  The captain is looking after us, as you see.”

“Well may he look, to see us in sich company!—­Will he har-r-m the missus?”

“Not he.  I tell you, you’ll like him yourself when you come to know him.”

“If I do, burn me!  Why, he says himself, that he’s Ould Nick, and I’m sure I never fancied the crathure but it was in just some such for-r-m.  Och! he’s ill-looking enough, for twenty Ould Nicks.”

Lest the reader get an exaggerated notion of Michael’s credulity, it may be well to say that Nick had painted a few days before, in a fit of caprice, and that one-half of his face was black, and the other a deep red, while each of his eyes was surrounded with a circle of white, all of which had got to be a little confused in consequence of a night or two of orgies, succeeded by mornings in which the toilet had been altogether neglected.  His dress, too, a blanket with tawdry red and yellow trimmings, with ornamented leggings and moccasins to correspond, had all aided in maintaining the accidental mystification.  Mike followed his companion, growling out his discontent, and watching the form of the Indian, as the latter still went loping over the flat, having passed the captain, with a message to the barns.

“I’ll warrant ye, now, the captain wouldn’t tolerate such a crathure, but he’s sent him off to the woods, as ye may see, like a divil, as he is!  To think of such a thing’s spakeing to the missus!  Will I fight him?—­That will I, rather than he’ll say an uncivil word to the likes of her!  He’s claws they tell me, though he kapes them so well covered in his fine brogues; divil burn me, but I’d grapple him by the toes.”

Joel now saw how deep was Michael’s delusion, and knowing it must soon be over, he determined to make a merit of necessity, by letting his friend into the truth, thereby creating a confidence that would open the way to a hundre’d future mischievous scenes.

“Claws!” he repeated, with an air of surprise—­“And why do you think an Injin has claws, Mike?”

“An Injin!  D’ye call that miscoloured crathure an Injin Joel.  Isn’t it one of yer yankee divils?”

“Out upon you, for an Irish ninny.  Do you think the captain would board a devil!  The fellow’s a Tuscarora, and is as well known here as the owner of the Hut himself.  It’s Saucy Nick.”

“Yes, saucy Ould Nick—­had it from his very mout’ and even the divil would hardly be such a blackguard as to lie about his own name.  Och! he’s a roarer, sure enough; and then for the tusks you mintion, I didn’t see ’em, with my eyes; but the crathure has a mouth that might hould a basket-full.”

Joel now perceived that he must go more seriously to work to undeceive his companion.  Mike honestly believed he had met an American devil, and it required no little argumentation to persuade him of the contrary.  We shall leave Joel employed in this difficult task, in which he finally succeeded, and follow the captain and his wife to the hut.