y wouldn't fold their hands and be
thankful. Were the Rush people poor and oppressed in Carolina? Mighty
well off, they seemed to her--had cows, if the wolves hadn't got 'em,
and had owned property and held their heads mighty high where they came
from, and claimed kin with well-to-do people in England. People said
Captain Stuart said he knew who they were--but the Lord only knew what
Captain Stuart knew! Then Mrs. Halsing further unfolded the fact that
Mrs Rush's husband had been the son of a bishop, but had got among the
dissenters, and had been cast out like a prodigal, because he took to
preaching.

"Preachin' being in the blood, I reckon," Mrs. Beedie palliated.

Thereupon he emigrated to America and was seized with a mission to the
Indians, that fastened upon him like a plague; and he lost his scalp and
his life--not even a red Indian would tolerate the doctrine he set up as
the Word! And Mrs. Halsing pursed her lips with a truly orthodox fixity.
And now we have no religion at the fort and the settlement.

But here Mrs. Beedie took up her testimony with unction and emphasis. We
had Captain Stuart!

Mrs. Halsing gave a sudden cry of derision like the abrupt squawk of a
jay-bird. Captain Stuart was not a humble man. That back of his was
never bent! She wondered if his heart had ever felt the need of aught.

"Yes," Mrs. Beedie affirmed. "When one of the soldiers died of the
pleurisy last winter in the fort and Captain Demere was ill himself,
Captain Stuart read the service all solemn and proper, and had men to
march with arms reversed and fire a volley over the grave."

Mrs. Halsing rose to the occasion by demanding what good such evidences
of religion might do in such a lot as there was at the fort. Forgetting
her scorn of the bishop's son, who had taken to Methodism and Indians,
she set forth the fact that the whole settlement was given to
dances--that the settlers with their wives and daughters, not content
with dances at home, must needs go to the fort on state and special
occasions, such as Christmas, and there participate in the ball, as they
called it, given in the officers mess-hall. They went in daylight, and
did not return till daylight, and the fiddle it sang the whole night
through! And cards--the soldiers played cards, and the settlers too; and
the officers, they played "loo," as they called it, as if that made it
any better. Even Captain Demere! This latter phrase occurred so
frequently in Mrs. Hal