Blennerhassett was in doubt whether to consider himself insulted or befriended. He had misgivings concerning Burr and the colony. Common sense told him that Byle might be more than half right.
"Do you know anything of the far West?" he asked. "Report gives out that it is a marvellous region."
Byle had a spice of mischief in his composition. He could not resist a humorous impulse to gull a credulous foreigner.
"Maybe I can give you some curious facts not generally known. I'm a sort of bookworm myself. I've nosed the Coon Skin Library. Did anybody ever tell you of the Missouri salt mountain? a mountain of real salt one hundred and eighty miles long, and forty-five broad, white as snow, and glittering in the sun? No vegetation grows near it, but a river of brine runs from its base. I have a chunk of the salt."
"Wonderful, wonderful!" ejaculated Blennerhassett.
"Isn't it wonderful? But not so contrary to nature as the shoe-and-stocking trees that grow at the headwaters of this Muskingum River."
"That seems impossible—shoe-and-stocking trees, did you say?"
"It does sound improbable, I admit, but seeing is believing. I've pulled half-grown shoes off one of those trees with these hands. I don't expect you to take my word. I didn't believe the story myself at first, and can't bring my mind to believe what my own brother Virgil told me he had seen and tasted—the Whiskey Lake in Southern Kentucky."
Gullible as he was, Blennerhassett looked incredulous. Byle's expression was serious to solemnity. His big blue eyes vouched for his perfect sanity.
"Now, I must go," said he, turning away; "I've a heap of things to do and folks to see before sunset. Good-bye."