would
excuse her for not joining us at the repast. And so we two sat down
quite companionably together to a dinner consisting of boiled pork and
excellent potatoes and milk, with wild strawberries for a dessert.

The record of this old man's life was a strange one. He was born at
Quebec, of Swiss parents, who took him with them, while he was yet a
child, to Switzerland, in which country and in France he received his
education and passed the earlier years of his life. Returning to Canada
when a grown-up young man, he became a trader among the Indians, and was
for some time in charge of a frontier post hard by where the city of
Detroit now stands. After various ups and downs in life, he joined his
brothers at this old settlement, where they had a mill and a country
store. That was nearly fifty years before, and he had never been out of
the place since. His brothers were all dead, and the sister to whom I
have referred was the only one of the family besides himself now left.
Another sister had died only two months previously, and this accounted
for the bit of black crape twisted round the old gentleman's little
gallipot-shaped glazed hat, which he had lifted so politely when I met
him on the road. One of his brothers was drowned by accident, and
another had committed suicide,--a fact which he communicated to me in a
hollow whisper, as we sat there in the dim old room. Fourteen members of
his family were buried, he told me, under the shade of the pine-trees
near the house. Two more graves must have been added to the row long
since; and that is the end of a family which evidently had once enjoyed
good social position, judging from the cultivated manners and
conversation of the strange old man, who had been fossilizing for nearly
half a century in this remote place.

Among the reminiscences imparted to me by the old man of the bay, I have
note of the following.

While he was at the frontier post near Detroit, engaged in commerce with
the savage tribes and pioneering trappers, there was a gathering of
warriors at the place,--a sort of carnival in celebration of some event
interesting to the red men. One day the Indians got drunker than usual,
and, having exhausted their stock of liquor, a deputation of them
entered the store of the trader, and demanded a fresh supply on credit,
which was refused. Upon this the savages became insolent and abusive,
and the trader's partner, a man of great determination and personal
strength,