to-day."

"Do you want me to go with you?" I said.

He looked at me incredulously.

"I should be delighted," he said, "but you mek a jest."

"I was never more serious in my life," I answered, "for I have business
in New Orleans. I shall be ready."

"Ha," cried Monsieur Vigo, hospitably, "I shall be enchant. We will talk
philosophe, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Rousseau."

For Monsieur Vigo was a great reader, and we had often indulged in
conversation which (we flattered ourselves) had a literary turn.

I spent the remaining hours arranging with a young lawyer of my
acquaintance to look after my business, and at ten o'clock I was aboard
the keel boat with my small baggage. At eleven, Monsieur Vigo and I were
talking "philosophe" over a wonderful breakfast under the awning, as
we dropped down between the forest-lined shores of the Ohio. My host
travelled in luxury, and we ate the Creole dishes, which his cook
prepared, with silver forks which he kept in a great chest in the cabin.

You who read this may feel something of my impatience to get to New
Orleans, and hence I shall not give a long account of the journey. What
a contrast it was to that which Nick and I had taken five years before
in Monsieur Gratiot's fur boat! Like all successful Creole traders,
Monsieur Vigo had a wonderful knack of getting on with the Indians, and
often when we tied up of a night the chief men of a tribe would come
down to greet him. We slipped southward on the great, yellow river which
parted the wilderness, with its sucks and eddies and green islands,
every one of which Monsieur knew, and I saw again the flocks of
water-fowl and herons in procession, and hawks and vultures wheeling in
their search. Sometimes a favorable wind sprang up, and we hoisted
the sail. We passed the Walnut Hills, the Nogales, the moans of the
alligators broke our sleep by night, and at length we came to Natchez,
ruled over now by that watch-dog of the Spanish King, Gayoso de Lemos.
Thanks to Monsieur Vigo, his manners were charming and his hospitality
gracious, and there was no trouble whatever about my passport.

Our progress was slow when we came at last to the belvedered plantation
houses amongst the orange groves; and as we sat on the wide galleries
in the summer nights, we heard all the latest gossip of the capital of
Louisiana. The river was low; there was an ominous quality in the heat
which had its effect, indeed, upon me, and made the old Creoles shake