“He is my old friend,” I told the landlord.

“He’s old friend to everybody that comes to Green Bay.  I’ll never get so much as a sign painted to hang in front of the Palace Tavern.”

I gave him twice his charges and he said: 

“What a loss it was to enterprise in the Bay when Pierre Grignon came here and built for the whole United States!”

The Grignon house, whether built for the whole United States or not, was the largest in Green Bay.  Its lawn sloped down to the Fox River.  It was a huge square of oak timbers, with a detached kitchen, sheltered by giant elms.  To this day it stands defying time with its darkening frame like some massive rock, the fan windows in the gables keeping guard north and south.

A hall divided the house through the center, and here Madame Grignon welcomed me as if I were a long-expected guest, for this was her custom; and as soon as she clearly remembered me, led me into a drawing-room where a stately old lady sat making lace.

This was the grandmother of the house.  Such a house would have been incomplete without a grandmother at the hearth.

The furniture of this hall or family room had been brought from Montreal; spindle chairs and a pier table of mahogany; a Turkey carpet, laid smoothly on the polished floor to be spurned aside by young dancers there; some impossible sea pictures, with patron saints in the clouds over mariners; an immense stuffed sofa, with an arm dividing it across the center;—­the very place for those head-to-head conversations with young men which the girls of the house called “twosing.”  It was, in fact, the favorite “twosing” spot of Green Bay.

Stools there were for children, and armchairs for old people were not lacking.  The small yellow spinning wheel of Madame Ursule, as I found afterwards Madame Grignon was commonly called, stood ready to revolve its golden disk wherever she sat.

The servants were Pawnee Indians, moving about their duties almost with stealth.

The little Grignon daughter who had stood lost in wonder at the dancing of Annabel de Chaumont, was now a turner of heads herself, all flaxen white, and contrasting with the darkness of Katarina Tank.  Katarina was taken home to the Grignon’s after her mother’s death.  Both girls had been educated in Montreal.

The seigniorial state in which Pierre Grignon lived became at once evident.  I found it was the custom during Advent for all the villagers to meet in his house and sing hymns.  On Christmas day his tables were loaded for everybody who came.  If any one died, he was brought to Pierre Grignon’s for prayer, and after his burial, the mourners went back to Pierre Grignon’s for supper.  Pierre Grignon and his wife were god-father and god-mother to most of the children born at La Baye.  If a child was left without father and mother, Pierre Grignon’s house became its asylum until a home could be found for it.  The few American officers stationed at