At dinner he sat next to the governess, and I could see her trying to digest his "original" language; and I was near enough to overhear some of their conversation. For instance, she asked him what his occupation was in his native land. "Oh," he said, "I do a little of everything, mostly farming. I've paddled my own canoe since I was a small kid."
"Is there much water in your country-place?" she inquired.
"Don't you mean country? Well, yes, we have quite a few pailfuls over there, and we don't have to pull a string to let our waterfalls down."
My neighbor must have thought me very inattentive; but I felt that I could not lose a word of Mr. Brent's conversation. The vestibule (or "Halle," as they called it), where we went after dinner, used to be occupied by the Corps du Garde. It had vaulted ceilings and great oak beams, and was filled with hunting implements of all ages arranged in groups on the walls very artistically; there were cross-bows, fencing-swords, masks, guns (old and new), pistols, etc. Mr. Brent was very much impressed by this collection, gazed at the specimens with sparkling admiration, and remarked to the governess, who was always at his elbow, "I never saw such a lot of things [meaning the weapons] outside of a shindy."
"What is a shindy?" inquired the governess, always anxious to improve her knowledge of the language.
"Why, don't you know what a shindy is? No? Well, it's a free fight, where you kill promiscuous."
"Gott im Himmel!" almost screamed the terrified damsel. "Do you mean to say that you have killed any one otherwise than in a duel?"
"I can't deny that I have killed a few," Mr. Brent said, cordially, "but never in cold blood."
"How dreadful!" his listener cried.
"But you see, over there," pointing with his cigar into the vague (toward Colorado), "if a man insults you, you must kill him then and there, and you must always be heeled."