I handed him a five-bit piece. "Taken! Yet I'd have had you down fifteen more if we were not in haste."
"I'd ha' eased your high-nosed don of a round two hundred, my lad, had he done his own dickering," muttered he, as, at a word from me, the señor drew out a bulging purse and counted into my palm the hundred and fifty dollars in American gold.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HOSPITABLE BLENNERHASSETS
While our sour-faced boat-dealer made out his bill of sale, I wrote down a list of provisions and furnishings for the boat. Upon reading this to the señor, he suggested the addition of some articles which I would have regarded as needless luxuries. Leaving these to his own selection, I jogged to the store of a gruff old German ship-chandler, one of the Hessians against whom my father had fought at Monmouth and Trenton, and whose wife, on my last trip, I had been so fortunate as to cure of a quinsy.
The good Frau came in as I was giving my list into the charge of her husband, and would not take a refusal to her offer of hospitality. Horse, list, and all were taken from me before I could defend myself, and I am not sure but what the Frau would herself have put me into the tub she made ready in the bedroom had I not begged for a dish of her sauerkraut and corned beef.
Cleansed and filled, I was given no peace until she had me safe between clean, dry sheets in their canopied fourposter. Having then been given sufficient respite to write a note of explanation to the señor, I rolled over and sank into that profound slumber of which I had so great need.
I awoke to find the sun up a good two hours and the hospitable couple beaming upon me as brightly as the sunrays which shone in through the diamond panes of the latticed window. The Frau held up my buckskins, all cleansed and dried and softened; the man showed my list, with every item checked and double checked, and a receipt from the party to whom I had agreed to deliver my last mount.
Between them I soon learned that the flatboat was well stocked for the voyage, and that the señor had sent word he was about to go aboard with his party. This last would have forced me to rise and accept the good wife's intended assistance with my dressing, had she not feared that I should rush off before she could serve my breakfast. I gulped my coffee while she tied on my moccasins. There was no question of other garments than my buckskins, since saddle and all had been stored aboard the flat. When I at last made my escape, it was with a hot sausage in either hand. These German delicacies followed the rye bread and coffee which had gone before, while I was riding to the wharf in my host's rattling ox-cart.