ter stretched himself on a bed by the stooping wall, and in
disgust of life and great pain of feet, begged us to order a pan of
charcoal and let him die the true Parisian death when that is not met on
the scaffold. Skenedonk said to me in Iroquois that Doctor Chantry was a
sick old woman who ought to be hidden some place to die, and it was his
opinion that the blessing of the church would absolve us. We could then
make use of the pouch of coin to carry on my plans.

My plans were more ridiculous than Skenedonk's. His at least took sober
shape, while mine were still the wild emotions of a young man's mind.
Many an hour I had spent on the ship, watching the foam speed past her
side, trying to foresee my course like hers in a trackless world. But it
seemed I must wait alertly for what destiny was making mine.

We paid for our lodgings, three commodious rooms, though in the mansard;
my secretary dragging himself to sit erect with groans and record the
increasing debt of myself and my servant.

"Come, Skenedonk," I then said. "Let us go down to the earth and buy
something that Doctor Chantry can eat."

That benevolent Indian was quite as ready to go to market as to abate
human nuisances. And Doctor Chantry said he could almost see English
beef and ale across the channel; but translated into French they would,
of course, be nothing but poulet and sour wine. I pillowed his feet with
a bag of down which he had kicked off his bed, and Skenedonk and I
lingered along the paving as we had many a time lingered through the
woods. There were book stalls a few feet square where a man seemed
smothered in his own volumes; and victual shops where you could almost
feed yourself for two or three sous; and people sitting outdoors
drinking wine, as if at a general festival. I thought Paris had comfort
and prosperity--with hereditary kings overthrown and an upstart in their
place. Yet the streets were dirty, with a smell of ancientness that
sickened me.

We got a loaf of bread as long as a staff, a pat of butter in a leaf,
and a bottle of wine. My servant, though unused to squaw labor, took on
himself the porterage of our goods, and I pushed from street to street,
keenly pleased with the novelty, which held somewhere in its volatile
ether the person of Madame de Ferrier.

Skenedonk blazed our track with his observant eye, and we told ourselves
we were searching for Doctor Chantry's beef. Being the unburdened hunter
I undertook to scan cr