palaver with you, all by yourself?"

"What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff.

I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying
"talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told
Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon
the sheriff and the soldier left us.

"It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic
smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that."

"Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could.

"Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't
wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest
Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young
Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?"

I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not
prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more
his conduct mystified me.

"Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit
down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all
about it."

The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep
interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its
essential points were these: