r any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was
indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut
off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a
soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to
attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one
ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou
in the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the
afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the
evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course.

He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from
one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in
Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in
Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed
her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and
somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously
exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week's board
and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably
at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible
deal.

"It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby repeated. "I didn't think
Marchand would be so mad as that."

"Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered Jowett, sucking his
unlighted cigar. "Osterhaut got wind of it--he's staying at old Mother
Thibadeau's, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to
it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at
Manitou, at Barbazon's Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin
night. It struck their fancy--gin, all gin! 'Course there's nothing in
gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took
away suspicion.

"I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn't I? Kissed me,
half a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was 'bully boy' and
'hell-fellow'; said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my best
patois. They liked that. I've got a pretty good stock of monkey-French,
and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes,
but they weren't no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done
a-purpose. They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn't have
cut up and boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon
lot before they'd done. I pretended to get