arried great
trees pilfered from the unknown forests of the North.

Down in the moist and shady bottom we came upon the log hut of a
half-breed trapper, and he agreed to ferry us across. As for our horses,
a keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt
easily arrange for this. And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock
on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current,
dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village
set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the
trees. And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain
that Mrs. Temple and Riddle might be there, thinking themselves secure in
this spot, so removed from the world and its doings.

"How now, my man of mysterious affairs?" cried Nick, from the bottom of
the boat; "you are as puckered as a sour persimmon. Have you a treaty
with Spain in your pocket or a declaration of war? What can trouble
you?"

"Nothing, if you do not," I answered, smiling.

"Lord send we don't admire the same lady, then," said Nick. "Pierrot,"
he cried, turning to one of the boatmen, "il y a des belles demoiselles
la, n'est-ce pas?"

The man missed a stroke in his astonishment, and the boat swung
lengthwise in the swift current.

"Dame, Monsieur, il y en a," he answered.

"Where did you learn French, Nick?" I demanded.

"Mr. Mason had it hammered into me," he answered carelessly, his eyes on
the line of keel boats moored along the shore. Our guides shot the canoe
deftly between two of these, the prow grounded in the yellow mud, and we
landed on Spanish territory.

We looked about us while our packs were being unloaded, and the place had
a strange flavor in that year of our Lord, 1789. A swarthy boatman in a
tow shirt with a bright handkerchief on his head stared at us over the
gunwale of one of the keel boats, and spat into the still, yellow water;
three high-cheeked Indians, with smudgy faces and dirty red blankets,
regarded us in silent contempt; and by the water-side above us was a sled
loaded with a huge water cask, a bony mustang pony between the shafts,
and a chanting negro dipping gourdfuls from the river. A road slanted up
the little limestone bluff, and above and below us stone houses could be
seen nestling into the hill, houses higher on the river side, and with
galleries there. We climbed the bluff, Benjy at our heels with the
saddle-bags, and found ourselves on a