m three times over. He has"
(here followed a series of political iniquities). "_Voila votre
affaire_."

"And how is it that he has kept his house?" asked the General.

"He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or something of that
sort."

The General looked thoughtfully at the fat man as the latter burst into a
fresh peal of laughter. I thought that if he had known what was being
said in our box that laugh would have died away.

I do not know whether the General took the house. I think he did. I
left for Louisville. There I saw the great merchant, who invited me to
his home to supper and consulted with me. His daughters were rebels and
would not speak to me. He had a great deal of property in Indiana, which
_might_ be oil-lands. If I would visit it and report on it, he would
send his partner with me to examine it. I consented to go.

This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy manners. With
him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by "stages," waggons, or on
horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the
interior of the State. I can remember vast marshy fields with millions
of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen
in my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to
the doors and floors of the houses. At last we reached our journey's end
at a large log-house on a good farm.

I liked the good man of the house. He said to us, after a time, that at
first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up city fellows, but had found
to his joy that we were old-fashioned, sensible people. There was no
sugar at his supper-table, but he had three substitutes for
it--"tree-sweetnin', bee-sweetnin', and sorghum"--that is, maple sugar,
honey, and the molasses made from Chinese maize. Only at a mile's
distance there was a "sugar-camp," and we could see the fires and hear
the shouts of the people engaged night and day in making sugar from the
trees.

He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often wandered.
During the Revolutionary war some one had buried a barrelful of silver
plate and money, and over it flitted the quivering silver flame, but no
one could ever find the spot.

The next day I examined the land. There was abundance of fossiliferous
limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary shells, also cartloads of
beautiful _geodes_ or round flint balls, which often rattled, and which,
when broken, were encrusted w