while the slave led the horse away; and no
customers demanding the trading friar's attention, he followed his
lodger to an inner room, having first lighted candles in his wooden
sconces. Their yellow lustre showed the tidiness of the shop, and the
penny merchandise arranged on shelves with that exactness which has been
thought peculiar to unmarried women. Father Baby was a scandal to the
established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some
said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it
was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others
declared that he had no right to the gray capote, and his tonsure was a
natural loss of hair; in fact, that he never had been a friar at all.
But in Kaskaskia nobody took him seriously, and Father Olivier was not
severe upon him. Custom made his harlequin antics a matter of course;
though Indians still paused opposite his shop and grinned at sight of a
long-gown peddling. His religious practices were regular and severe, and
he laid penance on himself for all the cheating he was able to
accomplish.

"I rode down from Elvirade with Governor Edwards," said the doctor. "He
and all Kaskaskia appear to be going to Colonel Menard's to-night."

"Yes, I stood and counted the carriages: the Bonds, the Morrisons, the
Vigos, the Sauciers, the Edgars, the Joneses"--

"Has anything happened these three days past?" inquired the doctor,
breaking off this list of notable Kaskaskians.

"Oh, many things have happened. But first here is your billet."

The young man broke the wafer of his invitation and unfolded the paper.

"It is a dancing-party," he remarked. His nose took an aquiline curve
peculiar to him. The open sheet, as he held it, showed the name of "Dr.
Dunlap" written on the outside. He leaned against a high black mantel.

"You will want hot shaving-water and your best ruffled shirt," urged the
friar.

"I never dance," said the other indifferently.

"And you do well not to," declared Father Baby, with some contemptuous
impatience. "A man who shakes like a load of hay should never dance. If
I had carried your weight, I could have been a holier man."

Dr. Dunlap laughed, and struck his boot with his riding-whip.

"Don't deceive yourself, worthy father. The making of an abbot was not
in you. You old rascal, I am scarcely in the house, and there you stand
all of a tremble for your jig."

Father Baby's death's-head face wrinkled it