He looked again from my mud-smeared buckskins to the senor's fine apparel, and smiled sourly. "Ye'll git no such boat at the price, here or at Pittsburg, if ye wait till the next freeze. One fifty is my best offer. Take it or leave it." "Skiff, kedge, sweeps, poles, and steer-oar included," I stipulated. He assented, with well-feigned reluctance: "As she stands--lock, stock, and barrel." I handed him a five-bit piece. "Taken! Yet I'd have had you down fifteen more if we were not in haste." "I'd ha' eased your high-nosed don of a round two hundred, my lad, had he done his own dickering," muttered he, as, at a word from me, the senor drew out a bulging purse and counted into my palm the hundred and fifty dollars in American gold. CHAPTER VIII THE HOSPITABLE BLENNERHASSETS While our sour-faced boat-dealer made out his bill of sale, I wrote down a list of provisions and furnishings for the boat. Upon reading this to the senor, he suggested the addition of some articles which I would have regarded as needless luxuries. Leaving these to his own selection, I jogged to the store of a gruff old German ship-chandler, one of the Hessians against whom my father had fought at Monmouth and Trenton, and whose wife, on my last trip, I had been so fortunate as to cure of a quinsy. The good Frau came in as I was giving my list into the charge of her husband, and would not take a refusal to her offer of hospitality. Horse, list, and all were taken from me before I could defend myself, and I am not sure but what the Frau would herself have put me into the tub she made ready in the bedroom had I not begged for a dish of her sauerkraut and corned beef. Cleansed and filled, I was given no peace until she had me safe between clean, dry sheets in their canopied fourposter. Having then been given sufficient respite to write a note of explanation to the senor, I rolled over and sank into that profound slumber of which I had so great need. I awoke to find the sun up a good two hours and the hospitable couple beaming upon me as brightly as the sunrays which shone in through the diamond panes of the latticed window. The Frau held up my buckskins, all cleansed and dried and softened; the man showed my list, with every item checked and double checked, and a receipt from the party to whom I had agreed to deliver my last mount.