exactly reply on the instant, because, you see, there wasn't much chance
for board and lodging thereabouts, unless--but he went on to say that I
should make his house my 'public,'perhaps he didn't say it quite in those
terms, that he and his wife would be glad to have me. With a couple of
Indians we could go north-west, where the moose-yards were, and have some
sport both exciting and prodigious. Well, I'm a muff, I know, but I
didn't refuse that. Besides, I began to see the safe side of the bet I
had made with my aunt, the dowager, and I was more than pleased with what
had come to pass so far. Lucky for you, too, you yarn-spinner, that the
thing did develop so, or you wouldn't be getting fame and shekels out of
the results of my story.

"Well, I got one thing out of the night's experience; and it was that the
Malbroucks were no plebs., that they had had their day where plates are
blue and gold and the spoons are solid coin. But what had sent them up
here among the moose, the Indians, and the conies--whatever THEY are?
How should I get at it? Insolence, you say? Yes, that. I should come
up here in December, and I should mulct my aunt in the price of a new
breech-loader. But I found out nothing the next morning, and I left
with a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife
that sent my blood tingling as it hadn't tingled since a certain season
in London, which began with my tuneful lyre sounding hopeful numbers and
ended with it hanging on the willows.

"When I thought it all over, as I trudged back on yesterday's track, I
concluded that I had told them all my history from my youth up until now,
and had got nothing from them in return. I had exhausted my family
records, bit by bit, like a curate in his first parish; and had gone so
far as to testify that one of my ancestors had been banished to Australia
for political crimes. Distinctly they had me at an advantage, though,