CHAPTEK XVII. 



HOME AGAIN. 



" Be thy intent wicked or charitable, 



Thou comest in such a questionable shape 



That I will speak to thee." 



Hamlet. 



If the reader will leave for a short time his hunting acquaint- 

 ances of the Key, and visit another contemporary camp, he can see, 

 in fancy's eye, one of the chief men that at the date of our story 

 controlled the destiny of the Floridas. 



Halleck Tustenuggee was a Mickasukie chief of much repute, as 

 well for his bravery and endurance as for his knowledge of the 

 resources of his native land, his eloquence and his cunning in all 

 the wiles of Indian diplomacy. Being born of the Mickasukies, the 

 original owners of the soil, and being related by marriage to the 

 principal men of the tribe, he possessed a wide influence that was 

 sustained by his strength and manliness of person. Gaily coloured 

 quills were plaited in the straight black hair that fell from the 

 crown of the head, and his costume was more uniform than that of 

 the savages of the northern tribes, and resembled the hunting-shirt 

 of the frontier hunter. He was six feet two inches in height, and 

 slightly made, with a sullen stolid face, that seemed in repose to 

 be without intelligence, but which brightened into intensity when 

 animated. Halleck Tustenuggee's favourite camp was located on 

 the upper waters of the Ouithlacouchee Kiver, on a live-oak island 

 that reared itself, the only stable land amid leagues of morass. 

 Here were erected neatly thatched cabins, and storehouses of food 

 and ammunition, and here, guarded by the solitude, the quicksand, 

 the tortuous lagoons, and the scaly reptiles of the swamp, were 

 always to be found a company of little swarthy imps that played 



