As he spoke French, I told him, in that language, my saddle-bag adventure; he was not surprised, as he was aware of the character of our host.  It was arranged that Mr. Courtenay and I should sleep in a double-bedded room on the first floor; the other hunters were accommodated in another part of the house.  Before retiring for the night, they all went to visit their horses, and the young girl took that opportunity to light me to the room.

“Oh, Sir,” she said to me, after she had closed the door, “pray do not tell the other travellers what I did, or they would all say that I am courting Charley, and my character would be lost.”

“Mark me,” replied I, “I have already told the story, and I know the Charley story is nothing but a—­what your father ordered you to say.  When I went to the corn-house, the tracks I followed were those made by your father’s heavy boots, and not by your light pumps and small feet.  The parson is a villain; tell him that; and if it were not too much trouble, I would summon him before some magistrate.”

The girl appeared much shocked, and I repented my harshness, and was about to address her more kindly, when she interrupted me.

“Spare me, Sir,” she said, “I know all; I am so unhappy; if I had but a place to go to, where I could work for bread, I would do it in a minute, for here I am very, very miserable.”

At that moment the poor girl heard the footsteps of the hunters, returning from the stable, and she quitted me in haste.

When Mr. Courtenay entered the room, he told me he expected that the parson was planning some new iniquity, for he had seen him just then crossing the river in a dug-out.  As everything was to be feared from the rascal, after the circumstance of the saddle-bags, we resolved that we would keep a watch; we dragged our beds near the window, and lay down without undressing.

To pass away the time, we talked of Captain Finn and of the Texans.  Mr. Courtenay related to me a case of negro-stealing by the same General John Meyer, of whom my fellow companion, the parson, had already talked so much while we travelling in Texas.  One winter, Mr. Courtenay, returning from the East, was stopped In Vincennes (Indiana) by the depth of the snow, which for a few days rendered the roads impassable.  There he saw a very fine breed of sheep, which he determined to introduce upon his plantation; and hearing that the general would be coming down the river in a large flat boat as soon as the ice would permit, he made an agreement with him that he should bring a dozen of the animals to the plantation, which stood a few miles below the mouth of the Ohio, on the other side of the Mississippi.

Meyer made his bargain, and two months afterwards delivered the live stock, for which he received the price agreed upon.  Then he asked permission to encamp upon Mr. Courtenay’s land, as his boat had received some very serious injury, which could not be repaired under five or six days.  Mr. Courtenay allowed Meyer and his people to take shelter in a brick barn, and ordered his negroes to furnish the boat-men with potatoes and vegetables of all descriptions.