Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention. He was a tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age, of gray hair and beard, with the glasses and the unmistakable air of the student. His stooped shoulders, his weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked him not as one acquainted with a wild life, but better fitted for other days and scenes. I pushed the trinket along the table towards him. "'Tis of little value," I said, "and is always in the way when I would find anything in my pocket." "But once some one hass made it; once it hass had value. Tell me where you get it?" "North of the Platte, in our western territories," I said. "I once traded in that country." "You are American?" "Yes." "So," he said thoughtfully. "So. A great country, a very great country. Me, I also live in it." "Indeed?" I said. "In what part?" "It iss five years since I cross the Rockies." "You have crossed the Rockies? I envy you." "You meesunderstand me. I live west of them for five years. I am now come east." "All the more, then, I envy you! You have perhaps seen the Oregon country? That has always been my dream." My eye must have kindled at that, for he smiled at me. "You are like all Americans. They leave their own homes and make new governments, yess? Those men in Oregon haf made a new government for themselfs, and they tax those English traders to pay for a government which iss American!" I studied him now closely. If he had indeed lived so long in the Oregon settlements, he knew far more about certain things than I did. "News travels slowly over so great a distance," said I. "Of course I know nothing of these matters except that last year and the year before the missionaries have come east to ask us for more settlers to come out to Oregon. I presume they want their churches filled." "But most their _farms!_" said the old man. "You have been at Fort Vancouver?" He nodded. "Also to Fort Colville, far north; also to what they call California, far south; and again to what they may yet call Fort Victoria. I haf seen many posts of the Hudson Bay Company." I was afraid my eyes showed my interest; but he went on. "I haf been, in the Columbia country, and in the Willamette country, where most of your Americans are settled. I know somewhat of California. Mr. Howard, of the Hudson Bay Company, knows also of this country of California. He said to those English gentlemans at our meeting last night that England should haf someting to offset California on the west coast; because, though Mexico claims California, the Yankees really rule there, and will rule there yet more. He iss right; but they laughed at him." "Oh, I think little will come of all this talk," I said carelessly. "It is very far, out to Oregon." Yet all the time my heart was leaping. So he had been there, at that very meeting of which I could learn nothing!