"Away north?"
"Sure, and in between California and the Roosian fur-trade forts is the British claims. That's from San Francisco up to 54° 40" north—all Hudson's Bay posts, wot we're heading for now. The British hain't got no rights to be there anyways, seeing it's U.S.A."
"What rights 'as you got to our forts?"
"Oh, as to that, the English can take their rotten forts away and bury 'em. It's the country belongs to us. We bought it from France. It's part of Louisiana."
"'Ow abart the moon?"
Silas grinned joyfully. "Waal," he drawled in his very slow speech, "it's this a-way. The President he come along to tell my mother as he'd like to owe her ten dollars, if she could fix it. I axed him about the moon, but I sort o' disremember exactly what he said. Lemme see. Why, yes.
"Mr. President, he says, says he, 'Waal, Silas, it ain't lo-cated, the moon ain't, yet,' says he, 'but when it is lo-cated, you kin bet yer life no foreigners will be up early enough in the mawning, but they'll find our stakes in fust.'"
Bill was profoundly impressed, and tried in vain to recollect any such conversation of his own with King William IV.
"Another time," said Silas thoughtfully, "when the President went buggy riding with my father, he telled him that when we're good and ready, we're going to run you British out of Oregon."
* * * * * * *