breakdown dance to the music
of the one fiddle in the settlement, and a supper of such eatables and
drinkables as the place could afford.

But there was no furniture in these two primitive dwellings. So once
more these wayfarers had each to sleep on a bed of leaves.

On the second day the man who owned the only mule and cart, and was the
only expressman and carrier to the settlement, offered to go to the
nearest post trader's station--a distance of fifty miles--and purchase
anything that the strangers might need, if said strangers had the money
to buy.

Rothsay had money in notes, hardly thought of, and never looked at,
except when, on their long journey, he had to take out his pocket book
to pay for accommodations at some log cabin, or to purchase a change of
under clothing at some post trader's.

Also old Scythia had a pouch of silver and gold coin, saved from the
money that had been regularly sent to her by Rule from the time when he
first began to earn wages to the time when they set out for the
wilderness in company.

Of this money they gave the frontier expressman all that he required to
purchase the plainest furniture for the log cabins--bedding, cooking
utensils, crockery ware, and some groceries.

"Yer can't buy bed or mattresses at the post trader's; but yer can buy
ticking, and we can sew it up for yer, and the men will stuff with
straw. There's plenty of straw," said one of the kindly women, speaking
for all her neighbors.

And the expressman set out with his list.

In three days he was back again with a satisfactory supply. The women
made the straw beds and pillows and hemmed the sheets. The men filled
the ticks and "knocked together" a pine table and a few rude,
three-legged stools. And so Rothsay and old Scythia were settled for the
winter.

Rothsay took upon himself the office of teacher and preacher. Among the
articles brought from the post trader's were a few Bibles, hymn books,
and elementary school books, slates and pencils.

He began his labors by holding a religious service in his own cabin on
the first Sabbath of his sojourn at La Terrepeur, which--perhaps for its
rarity--was attended by the whole of the little community. And on the
next day he opened his little school in his hut, where he taught the
children all day, and where he slept at night. Old Scythia's cabin was
kitchen and dining room.

All that autumn, winter and spring Rule labored among the pioneers of La
Terrepeur. It