citizen might have worn.  Yet his general appearance was so unusual that a group of townsfolk had already assembled round him, staring with open mouth at his horse and himself.  A battered gun with an extremely long barrel was fastened by the stock to his stirrup, while the muzzle stuck up into the air behind him.  At each holster was a large dangling black bag, and a gaily coloured red-slashed blanket was rolled up at the back of his saddle.  His horse, a strong-limbed dapple-gray, all shiny with sweat above, and all caked with mud beneath, bent its fore knees as it stood, as though it were overspent.  The rider, however, having satisfied himself as to the house, sprang lightly out of his saddle, and disengaging his gun, his blanket, and his bags, pushed his way unconcernedly through the gaping crowd and knocked loudly at the door.

“Who is he, then?” asked De Catinat.  “A Canadian?  I am almost one myself.  I had as many friends on one side of the sea as on the other.  Perchance I know him.  There are not so many white faces yonder, and in two years there was scarce one from the Saguenay to Nipissing that I had not seen.”

“Nay, he is from the English provinces, Amory.  But he speaks our tongue.  His mother was of our blood.”

“And his name?”

“Is Amos—­Amos—­ah, those names!  Yes, Green, that was it—­Amos Green.  His father and mine have done much trade together, and now his son, who, as I understand, has lived ever in the woods, is sent here to see something of men and cities.  Ah, my God! what can have happened now?”

A sudden chorus of screams and cries had broken out from the passage beneath, with the shouting of a man and the sound of rushing steps.  In an instant De Catinat was half-way down the stairs, and was staring in amazement at the scene in the hall beneath.

Two maids stood, screaming at the pitch of their lungs, at either side.  In the centre the aged man-servant Pierre, a stern old Calvinist, whose dignity had never before been shaken, was spinning round, waving his arms, and roaring so that he might have been heard at the Louvre.  Attached to the gray worsted stocking which covered his fleshless calf was a fluffy black hairy ball, with one little red eye glancing up, and the gleam of two white teeth where it held its grip.  At the shrieks, the young stranger, who had gone out to his horse, came rushing back, and plucking the creature off, he slapped it twice across the snout, and plunged it head-foremost back into the leather bag from which it had emerged.

“It is nothing,” said he, speaking in excellent French; “it is only a bear.”

“Ah, my God!” cried Pierre, wiping the drops from his brow.  “Ah, it has aged me five years!  I was at the door, bowing to monsieur, and in a moment it had me from behind.”

“It was my fault for leaving the bag loose.  The creature was but pupped the day we left New York, six weeks come Tuesday.  Do I speak with my father’s friend, Monsieur Catinat?”