there?"

"No; do you not see we are going back to the fort?"

And, to be sure, our course had now turned, and we were setting in our
first direction. In this manner, after tacking to the right and left and
putting backwards and forwards during the greater part of two hours, we
at length reached the little landing, on which the assembled party stood
ready to greet us.

CHAPTER VIII

FORT WINNEBAGO.

Major and Mrs. Twiggs, and a few of the younger officers (for nearly all
of the older ones were absent), with our brother Robert, or, as he is
called throughout all the Indian tribes, "Bob," gave us a cordial
welcome--how cordial those alone can know who have come, like us, to a
remote, isolated home in the wilderness. The Major insisted on our
taking possession at once of vacant quarters in the fort, instead of at
"the Agency," as had been proposed.

"No--we must be under the same roof with them. Mrs. Twiggs had been
without a companion of her own sex for more than four months, and would
certainly not hear of a separation now. But we must be their guests
until the arrival of the boats containing our furniture," which, under
the care of our old acquaintance, Hamilton Arndt, was making its way
slowly up from Green Bay.

A dinner had been prepared for us. This is one of the advantages of the
zigzag approach by the Fox River--travellers never take their friends by
surprise; and when the whole circle sat down to the hospitable board, we
were indeed a merry company.

After dinner Mrs. Twiggs showed me the quarters assigned to us, on the
opposite side of the spacious hall. They consisted of two large rooms on
each of the three floors or stories of the building. On the ground-floor
the front room was vacant. The one in the rear was to be the
sleeping-apartment, as was evident from a huge, unwieldy bedstead, of
proportions amply sufficient to have accommodated Og, the King of
Bashan, with Mrs. Og and the children into the bargain. We could not
repress our laughter; but the bedstead was nothing to another structure
which occupied a second corner of the apartment.

This edifice had been built under the immediate superintendence of one
of our young lieutenants, and it was plain to be seen that upon it both
he and the soldiers who fabricated it had exhausted all their
architectural skill. The timbers of which it was composed had been
grooved and carved; the pillars that supported the front swelled in and
out in a mos