Having offered this compromise, Father Baby sprung with a cheerful
eagerness to deal with Vigo's slave boy.

The doctor sat still, his ears closed to the chatter in the shop. His
bitter thoughts centred on the new arrival in Kaskaskia, on her brother,
on all her family.

She herself, unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her,
was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage
had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load,
and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The
mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around
her. The girl felt bewildered, as if she had crossed ocean and forest to
find, instead of savage wilderness, an enchanted English county full of
French country estates. Names and dignitaries crowded her memory.

A great clear glass, gilt-framed and divided into three panels, stood
over the drawing-room mantel. It reflected crowds of animated faces, as
the dance began, crossing and recrossing or running the reel in a vista
of rooms, the fan-lights around the hall door and its open leaves
disclosing the broad gallery and the dusky world of trees outside; it
reflected cluster on cluster of wax-lights. To this day the great glass
stands there, and, spotless as a clear conscience, waits upon the
future. It has held the image of Lafayette and many an historic
companion of his.

On the other side of the hall, in the dining-room, stood a carved
mahogany sideboard holding decanters and glasses. In this quiet retreat
elderly people amused themselves at card-tables. Apart from them, but
benignantly ready to chat with everybody, sat the parish priest; for