ood beer.

The glasses touched, Fox said, "Here's luck!" and the landlord met it
with "Best resbects, mister!"

In good time two more schnits followed, and as the landlord was each
time requested to join with Fox, he was so pleased with his liberality
and apparent good feeling that he beamed all over like a sunny day in
June.

"You have a beautiful place here," said Fox.

"Oh, so, so!" answered the landlord with a quick, deprecatory shrug
which meant that he was very well satisfied with it.

"I was never here before."

"No?--So? I guess mebby I don't ever have seen you. Don't you leef py
Rochester?--no?"

"No, I live in Buffalo, and I just came over to Rochester on a little
business. Having plenty of time, I thought I would stroll out a bit this
morning."

"Ya, I get a good many strollers dot same way. Eferypody goes out by der
Bort."

"The Bort?"

"Ya, ya, der Bort--Bort Charlotte."

"Is this the way to Charlotte?"

"To be certainly. When you come five miles auf, den you stand by der
Bort, sure."

"And so that is where the big woman and the little man were going?"
asked Fox carelessly.

"Sure, sure," said the landlord with a knowing wink; and then taking a
very large pinch of snuff, and laying his forefinger the whole length of
his rosy nose, added with an air of great importance and mystery, "I
tell you, py Jupiter, I don't let somebody got rooms _here_!"

"That's right, old fellow!" said Fox, slapping the honest beer-vender on
the shoulder. "Be unhappy and you will be virtuous!"

"Vell," continued the Teuton, excitedly lapsing into his own vernacular,
"_es macht keinen unterschied_; I don't got mein leefing dot way. I--I
vould pe a bolitician first!"

Fox expressed his admiration for such heroism, and purchased a cigar to
assist the landlord in his efforts to avoid the necessity of either
renting rooms to ladies and gentlemen of Mrs. Winslow's and Le Compte's
standing, or of accepting the more unfortunate emergency of becoming a
"bolitician."

Then they both seated themselves outside the house, underneath the
shaded porch, and chatted away about current events, Fox all the time
directing the conversation in a manner so as to draw out the genial
Teuton on the subject which most interested him, and was successful to
the extent of learning that Le Compte was what the landlord termed a
"luffer," evidently meaning a loafer; that several months before, they
came there together desiring a room, whi