Before he opened the box, however, he took a quick, impatient turn or
two up and down his miserable little room. Not once, since he had set
forth to return to his own country, and to the civilization from which,
for more than twenty years, he had been an outcast, had he felt (to use
his favorite expression) that he was "his own man again," until now. A
thrill of the old, breathless, fierce suspense of his days of deadly
peril ran through him, as he thought on the forbidden secret into which
he was about to pry, and for the discovery of which he was ready to
dare any hazard and use any means. "It goes through and through me,
a'most like dodging for life again among the bloody Indians," muttered
Mat to himself, as he trod restlessly to and fro in his cage of a room,
rubbing all the while at the scars on his face, as his way was when any
new excitement got the better of him.
At the very moment when this thought was rising ominously in his mind,
Valentine was expounding anew the whole scope and object of "Columbus"
to a fresh circle of admiring spectators--while his wife was
interpreting to Madonna above stairs Zack's wildest jokes about his
friend's love-stricken condition; and all three were laughing gaily at
a caricature, which he was maliciously drawing for them, of "poor old
Mat" in the character of a scalped Cupid.
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