ock."

Presently Madame Gratiot went off to Mass, while I walked with Monsieur
Gratiot to a storehouse near the river's bank, whence the skins, neatly
packed and numbered, were being carried to the boats on the
sweating shoulders of the negroes, the half-breeds, and the Canadian
boatmen,--bulky bales of yellow elk, from the upper plains of the
Missouri, of buffalo and deer and bear, and priceless little packages
of the otter and the beaver trapped in the green shade of the endless
Northern forests, and brought hither in pirogues down the swift river by
the red tribesmen and Canadian adventurers.

Afterwards I strolled about the silent village. Even the cabarets were
deserted. A private of the Spanish Louisiana Regiment in a dirty uniform
slouched behind the palings in front of the commandant's quarters,--a
quaint stone house set against the hill, with dormer windows in its
curving roof, with a wide porch held by eight sturdy hewn pillars;
here and there the muffled figure of a prowling Indian loitered, or a
barefooted negress shuffled along by the fence crooning a folk-song. All
the world had obeyed the call of the church bell save these--and Nick. I
bethought myself of Nick, and made my way back to Monsieur Gratiot's.

I found my cousin railing at Benjy, who had extracted from the
saddle-bags a wondrous gray suit of London cut in which to array his
master. Clothes became Nick's slim figure remarkably. This coat was cut
away smartly, like a uniform, towards the tails, and was brought in at
the waist with an infinite art.

"Whither now, my conquistador?" I said.

"To Mass," said he.

"To Mass!" I exclaimed; "but you have slept through the greater part of
it."

"The best part is to come," said Nick, giving a final touch to his
neck-band. Followed by Benjy's adoring eyes, he started out of the door,
and I followed him perforce. We came to the little church, of upright
logs and plaster, with its crudely shingled, peaked roof, with its tiny
belfry crowned by a cross, with its porches on each side shading the
line of windows there. Beside the church, a little at the back, was the
cure's modest house of stone, and at the other hand, under spreading
trees, the graveyard with its rough wooden crosses. And behind these
graves rose the wooded hill that stretched away towards the wilderness.

What a span of life had been theirs who rested here! Their youth,
perchance, had been spent amongst the crooked streets of some Fren