John McNeil, whom the Traylors had met on the road near Niagara Falls and who had shared their camp with them, arrived on the stage that evening.  He was dressed in a new butternut suit and clean linen and looked very handsome.  Samson writes that he resembled the pictures of Robert Emmet.  With fine, dark eyes, a smooth skin, well moulded features and black hair neatly brushed on a shapely head he was not at all like the rugged Abe.  In a low tone and very modestly, with a slight brogue on his tongue he told of his adventures on the long, shore road to Michigan.  Ann sat listening and looking into his face as he talked.  Abe came in, soon after eight o’clock, and was introduced to the stranger.  All noted the contrast between the two young men as they greeted each other.  Abe sat down for a few minutes and looked sadly into the fire but said nothing.  He rose presently, excused himself and went away.

Soon Samson followed him.  Over at Offut’s store he did not find Abe, but Bill Berry was drawing liquor from the spigot of a barrel set on blocks in a shed connected with the rear end of the store and serving it to a number of hilarious young Irishmen.  His shirt was soiled.  Its morning-glories had grown dim in a kind of dusty twilight.  The young men asked Samson to join them.

“No, thank you.  I never touch it,” he said.

“We’ll come over here an’ learn ye how to enjoy yerself some day,” one of them said.

“I’m pretty well posted on that subject now,” Samson answered.

It is likely that they would have begun his schooling at once but when they came out into the store and saw the big Vermonter standing in the candlelight their laughter ceased for a moment.  Bill was among them with a well filled bottle in his hand.

He and the others got into a wagon which had been waiting at the door and drove away with a wild Indian whoop from the lips of one of the young men.

Samson sat down in the candlelight and Abe in a moment arrived.

“I’m getting awful sick o’ this business,” said Abe.

“I kind o’ guess you don’t like the whisky part of it,” Samson remarked, as he felt a piece of cloth.

“I hate it,” Abe went on.  “It don’t seem respectable any longer.”

“Back in Vermont we don’t like the whisky business.”

“You’re right, it breeds deviltry and disorder.  In my youth I was surrounded by whisky.  Everybody drank it.  A bottle or a jug of liquor was thought to be as legitimate a piece of merchandise as a pound of tea or a yard of calico.  That’s the way I’ve always thought of it.  But lately I’ve begun to get the Yankee notion about whisky.  When it gets into bad company it can raise the devil.”

Soon after nine o’clock Abe drew a mattress filled with corn husks from under the counter, cleared away the bolts of cloth and laid it where they had been and covered it with a blanket.

“This is my bed,” said he.  “I’ll be up at five in the morning.  Then I’ll be making tea here by the fireplace to wash down some jerked meat and a hunk o’ bread.  At six or a little after I’ll be ready to go with you again.  Jack Kelso is going to look after the store to-morrow.”