Outside the lodge they met the little Feather-foot who cried, “Where is the big elk, Moh-Kwa, that I killed?” An’ the Blossom showed him his father, Strongarm, where he slept, an’ said, “There is your big elk, Feather-foot; an’ this will ever be your best hunting for it found you your father again.” When Moh-Kwa saw that everything was settled an’ well, an’ that he would now have always his regular fish, he wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his paws which were all singed fur an’ ashes, an’ said, “I am the weariest bear along the whole length of the Yellowstone, for I carried some heavy trees an’ have worked hard. Now I will sleep an’ rest.” An’ with that Moh-Kwa lay down an’ snored an’ slept four days; then he arose an’ eat up the countless fish which Strongarm had speared to be ready for him. This done, Moh-Kwa lighted his pipe of kinnikinick, an’ softly rubbing his stomach where the fish were, said: “Fish give Moh-Kwa a good heart.” “Now that is what I call a pretty story,” said the Jolly Doctor. “It is that,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, with emphasis. “And I’ve no doubt the Strongarm made it a point thereafter to be careful as to what game he hunted. But, leaving fable for fact, my friend,”--the Red Nosed Gentleman addressed now the Sour Gentleman--“would you not call it your turn to uplift the spirits of this company? We have just enough time and I just enough burgundy for one more story before we go to bed.” “While our friend, the Sioux Gentleman,” responded the Sour Gentleman, “was unfolding his interesting fable, my thoughts--albeit I listened to him and lost never a word--were to the rear with the old days which came on the back of that catastrophe of tobacco. They come to me most clearly as I sit here smoking and listening, and with your permission I’ll relate the story of The Smuggled Silk.” CHAPTER XI.--THAT SMUGGLED SILK. Should your curiosity invite it, and the more since I promised you the story, we will now, my friends, go about the telling of that one operation in underground silk. It is not calculated to foster the pride of an old man to plunge into a relation of dubious doings of his youth. And yet, as I look backward on that one bit of smuggling of which I was guilty, so far as motive was involved, I exonerate myself. I looked on the government, because of the South’s conquest by the North, and that later ruin of myself through the machinations of the Revenue office, as both a political and a personal foe. And I felt, not alone morally free, but was impelled besides in what I deemed a spirit of justice to myself, to wage war against it as best I might. It was on such argument, where the chance proffered, that I sought wealth as a smuggler. I would deplete the government--forage, as it were, on the enemy--thereby to fatten my purse.