Nightfall was very clear and fair in this Northwestern territory. A man felt nearer to the sunset. The region took hold upon me: particularly when one who was neither a warehouseman nor a Canadian fur hunter, hurried in and took me by the hand.
Indeed, if he had held his fiddle, and tuned it upon an arm not quite so stout, I should have known without being told that he was the man who had played in the Saint-Michel cabin while Annabel de Chaumont climbed the chimney.
We sat and talked until the light faded. The landlord brought a candle, and yelled up the loft, where Skenedonk had already stretched himself in his blanket, as he loved to do:
"You drive your slaves too hard, landlord," said Pierre Grignon.
"You'd think I hadn't any, Mr. Grignon; for they're never in the way when they're wanted."
"One industrious man you certainly have."
"Yes, Sam is a good fellow; but I'll have to go out and wake him up and make him rub the horses down."
"Never mind," said Pierre Grignon. "I'm going to take these travelers home with me."
"Now I know how a tavern ought to be kept," said the landlord. "But what's the use of my keeping one if Pierre Grignon carries off all the guests?"
"He is my old friend," I told the landlord.
"He's old friend to everybody that comes to Green Bay. I'll never get so much as a sign painted to hang in front of the Palace Tavern."
I gave him twice his charges and he said:
"What a loss it was to enterprise in the Bay when Pierre Grignon came here and built for the whole United States!"
The Grignon house, whether built for the whole United States or not, was the largest in Green Bay. Its lawn sloped down to the Fox River. It was a huge square of oak timbers, with a detached kitchen, sheltered by giant elms. To this day it stands defying time with its darkening frame like some massive rock, the fan windows in the gables keeping guard north and south.
A hall divided the house through the center, and here Madame Grignon welcomed me as if I were a long-expected guest, for this was her custom; and as soon as she clearly remembered me, led me into a drawing-room where a stately old lady sat making lace.
This was the grandmother of the house. Such a house would have been incomplete without a grandmother at the hearth.