mpany, and help him along, and so
I did. He was fond of a joke, was the old Judge, and sais he,

"'I'm afraid we shall illustrate that passage o' Scriptur', Mr. Slick,'
said he, '"And their judges shall be overthrown in stony places." It's
jist a road for it, ain't it?'

"Well we chattered along the road this way a leetle, jist a leetle
faster than we travelled, for we made a snail's gallop of it, that's a
fact; and night overtook us, as I suspected it would, at Obi Rafuse's,
at the Great Lake; and as it was the only public for fourteen miles, and
dark was settin' in, we dismounted, but oh, what a house it was!

"Obi was an emigrant, and those emigrants are ginerally so fond of
ownin' the soil, that like misers, they carry as much of it about 'em
on their parsons, in a common way, as they cleverly can. Some on 'em
are awful dirty folks, that's a fact, and Obi was one of them. He kept
public, did Obi; the sign said it was a house of entertainment for man
and beast. For critters that ain't human, I do suppose it spoke the
truth, for it was enough to make a hoss larf, if he could understand it,
that's a fact; but dirt, wretchedness and rags, don't have that effect
on me.

"The house was built of rough spruce logs, (the only thing spruce about
it), with the bark on, and the cracks and seams was stuffed with moss.
The roof was made of coarse slabs, battened and not shingled, and the
chimbly peeped out like a black pot, made of sticks and mud, the way
a crow's nest is. The winders were half broke out, and stopped up with
shingles and old clothes, and a great bank of mud and straw all round,
reached half way up to the roof, to keep the frost out of the cellar. It
looked like an old hat on a dung heap. I pitied the old Judge, because
he was a man that took the world as he found it, and made no complaints.
He know'd if you got the best, it was no use complainin' that the best
warn't good.

"Well, the house stood alone in the middle of a clearin', without an
outhouse of any sort or kind about it, or any fence or enclosure, but
jist rose up as a toodstool grows, all alone in the field. Close behind
it was a thick short second growth of young birches, about fifteen feet
high, which was the only shelter it had, and that was on the wrong side,
for it was towards the south.

"Well, when we alighted, and got the baggage off, away starts the guide
with the Judge's traps, and ups a path through the woods to a settler's,
and leaves