for a place of town gossip, and hoped I might
hit upon something to aid me in my errand, which was no more than begun,
it seemed. Entering the place shortly before noon, I made pretense of
reading, all the while with an eye and an ear out for anything that
might happen.

As I stared in pretense at the page before me, I fumbled idly in a
pocket, with unthinking hand, and brought out to place before me on the
table, an object of which at first I was unconscious--the little Indian
blanket clasp. As it lay before me I felt seized of a sudden hatred for
it, and let fall on it a heavy hand. As I did so, I heard a voice at my
ear.

"_Mein Gott_, man, do not! You break it, surely."

I started at this. I had not heard any one approach. I discovered now
that the speaker had taken a seat near me at the table, and could not
fail to see this object which lay before me.

"I beg pardon," he said, in a broken speech which showed his foreign
birth; "but it iss so beautiful; to break it iss wrong."

Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention. He was a
tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age, of gray hair and beard, with
the glasses and the unmistakable air of the student. His stooped
shoulders, his weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray
hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked him not as one
acquainted with a wild life, but better fitted for other days and
scenes.

I pushed the trinket along the table towards him.

"'Tis of little value," I said, "and is always in the way when I would
find anything in my pocket."

"But once some one hass made it; once it hass had value. Tell me where
you get it?"

"North of the Platte, in our western territories," I said. "I once
traded in that country."

"You are American?"

"Yes."

"So," he said thoughtfully. "So. A great country, a very great country.
Me, I also live in it."

"Indeed?" I said. "In what part?"

"It iss five years since I cross the Rockies."

"You have crossed the Rockies? I envy you."

"You meesunderstand me. I live west of them for five years. I am now
come east."

"All the more, then, I envy you! You have perhaps seen the Oregon
country? That has always been my dream."

My eye must have kindled at that, for he smiled at me.

"You are like all Americans. They leave their own homes and make new
governments, yess? Those men in Oregon haf made a new government for
themselfs, and they tax those English traders to p