Silvertail (thus was the stallion named) was not more
remarkable in sleekness of coat, soundness of carcase,
and fleetness of pace, than his rider was in the
characteristics of corpulency and joviality.

Sampson Gattrie had passed the greater part of his younger
days in America. He had borne arms in the revolution,
and was one of those faithful loyalists, who, preferring
rather to abandon a soil which, after all, was one of
adoption, than the flag under which they had been nurtured,
had, at the termination of that contest, passed over into
Canada. Having served in one of those irregular corps,
several of which had been employed with the Indians,
during the revolutionary contest, he had acquired much
of the language of these latter, and to this knowledge
was indebted for the situation of interpreter which he
had for years enjoyed. Unhappily for himself, however,
the salary attached to the office was sufficient to keep
him in independence, and, to the idleness consequent on
this, (for the duties of an interpreter were only
occasional,) might have been attributed the rapid growth
of a vice--an addiction to liquor--which unchecked
indulgence had now ripened into positive disease.

Great was the terror that Sampson was wont to excite in
the good people of Amherstburg. With Silvertail at his
speed, he would gallop into the town, brandishing his
cudgel, and reeling from side to side, exhibiting at one
moment the joyous character of a Silenus, at another, as
we have already shown--that of an inebriated Centaur.