owned in the Illinois Territory, we saw none when a
red-headed man rushed forth shouting:

"Sam, you lazy nigger, come here and take the gentleman's horses! Where
is that Sam? Light down, sir, with your Indian, and I will lead your
beasts to the hostler myself."

In the same way our host provided a supper and bed with armies of
invisible servants. Skenedonk climbed a ladder to the loft with our
saddlebags.

"Where is that chambermaid?" cried the tavern keeper.

"Yes, where is she?" said a man who lounged on a bench by the entrance.
"I've heard of her so often I would like to see her myself."

The landlord, deaf to raillery, bustled about and spread our table in
his public room.

"Corn bread, hominy, side meat, ven'zin," he shouted in the kitchen.
"Stir yourself, you black rascal, and dish up the gentleman's supper."

Skenedonk walked boldly to the kitchen door and saw our landlord stewing
and broiling, performing the offices of cook as he had performed those
of stableman. He kept on scolding and harrying the people who should
have been at his command:--"Step around lively, Sam. Tell the gentleman
the black bottle is in the fireplace cupboard if he wants to sharpen his
appetite. Where is that little nigger that picks up chips? Bring me some
more wood from the wood-pile! I'll teach you to go to sleep behind the
door!"

Our host served us himself, running with sleeves turned back to admonish
an imaginary cook. His tap-room was the fireplace cupboard, and it was
visited while we ate our supper, by men in elkskin trousers, and caps
and hooded capotes of blue cloth. These Canadians mixed their own drink,
and made a cross-mark on the inside of the cupboard door, using a system
of bookkeeping evidently agreed upon between themselves and the
landlord. He shouted for the lazy barkeeper, who answered nothing out of
nothingness.

Nightfall was very clear and fair in this Northwestern territory. A man
felt nearer to the sunset. The region took hold upon me: particularly
when one who was neither a warehouseman nor a Canadian fur hunter,
hurried in and took me by the hand.

"I am Pierre Grignon," he said.

Indeed, if he had held his fiddle, and tuned it upon an arm not quite so
stout, I should have known without being told that he was the man who
had played in the Saint-Michel cabin while Annabel de Chaumont climbed
the chimney.

We sat and talked until the light faded. The landlord brought a candle,
and yelled up the