a lineal descendant of the Rev. Doctor
Johannes Vanderklonk, the first dominie of the patroons, who served
for one thousand guilders, payable in meat or drink, twenty-two
bushels of wheat and two firkins of butter. He saved the souls of the
savages, while the white men cheated their bodies. Now and then, in
those early days, the children of the forest protested against this
evangelizing process and carried off the good dominie to the torture
stake, where they plucked out his finger nails; but he returned with
as much zest to his task of landing these simple souls in Paradise as
those who employed him displayed in making an earthly Paradise out of
the lands the red men left behind them.

When by this shrewd system the savages were gradually saved, and
incidentally exterminated, Little Thunder's occupation was gone and he
became a pensioner of Mynheer the Patroon, earning his bread by an
occasional sermon to the tenants, exhorting them to thrift and
industry, to be faithful and multiply, and to pay their rents
promptly. As Mynheer's time drew near he sent for his attorney and
commanded him to look up the life, deeds and character of Edward
Mauville.

"This I did," said the lawyer, "and here it is." Waving a roll of
papers before his interested listener.

"A nauseating mess, no doubt," carelessly remarked the land baron.

"Oh, sir!" deprecated the lawyer, opening the roll. "'Item: Religion;
pupil of the brilliant Jesuit, Abbe Moneau. Item: Morals; Exhibit A,
the affair with Countess ---- in Paris, where he was sent to be
educated after the fashion of French families in New Orleans; Exhibit
B--'"

"Spare me," exclaimed Mauville. "Life is wearisome enough, but a
biography--" He shrugged his shoulders. "Come to your point."

"Of course, sir, I was only trying to carry out his instructions. The
same, sir, as I would carry out yours!" With an ingratiating smile.
Whereupon the attorney told how he had furnished the patroon this roll
and fastened it to his bed, so that he might wind and unwind it,
perusing it at his pleasure. This the dying man did, sternly noting
the damaging facts; thinking doubtlessly how traits will endure for
generations--aye, for ages, in spite of the pillory!--the while Little
Thunder was roaring petitions to divinity by his bedside, as though to
bluster and bully the Almighty into granting his supplications. The
patroon glanced from his pensioner to the roll; from the kneeling man
to that prodigi