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Lapierre could not feel otherwise than highly flattered by the way the stranger referred to his establishment, but he was wholly at a loss to understand how the fame of the Royal Oak, and more especially of the Saturday night suppers, had extended to so great a distance as Nashville. In response to his inquiries on these points, however, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Haskins gave a clear and lucid explanation, which will be found in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GUEST CREATES A SENSATION AT THE ROYAL OAK.

“Well,” said Haskins, “I didn’t hear of you quite so far off as Nashville. It was when I was travelling in Kentucky buying horses, last year. At Lexington I fell in with an English chap named Randall, who used to live in this neighborhood. I hired him to buy horses for me. He was with me about three months, an’ if I could only ‘a’ kept him sober he’d been with me yet, for he was about as keen a judge of a horse as ever I came across in my born days, and knew mighty well how to make a bargain. Well, we hadn’t been together a week afore he begun to tell me about a place where he used to live in Canada West, where he said a little money went a long way, and where good horses could be bought cheap. He wanted me to send him up here to buy for me, and I don’t know but I should ‘a’ done it if I’d found he was to be trusted. But he would drink like all creation when he had money. Old Bourbon was a thing he couldn’t resist. He had an awful poor opinion of all the rest of our American institootions, and used to say they wa’n’t o’ no account as compared to what he used to have to home in England; but when it come to Bourbon whisky, he was as full-mouthed as Uncle Henry Clay himself. He ‘lowed there wa’n’t anything either in England or in Canada to touch it. An’ when he got four or five inches of it inside him, there was no gittin’ along with him nohow. There wa’n’t anything on airth he wouldn’t do to git a couple of inches more, and when he got them he was the catawamptiousest critter I ever did see. You couldn’t place any more dependence on him than on a free nigger. Besides, he used to neglect his wife, and a man who neglects his wife ain’t a man to trust with a couple o’ thousand dollars at a time. No sir-ree! Not much, he ain’t. But, as I was sayin’, the way he used to harp on this place o’ Lapierre’s was a caution. Whenever we used to git planted down in one of our cross-road taverns, he’d turn up his nose till you could see clean down his throat into his stommick. The fact is, our country taverns ain’t up to much, an’ sometimes I could hardly stand ’em myself. When we’d come in after a hard day’s ridin’, and git sot down to a feed of heavy short-cake and fat pork, then Randall ‘ud begin to blow about the grub up here at Lapierre’s. He used to tell about the hot suppers served up here to a passel o’ farmers on Saturday nights till I most got sick o’ hearing him. But I see your mugs air empty again, gentlemen. Landlord, please to do your dooty, and score it up to yours truly.”

During this long harangue the assembled guests alternately scanned the speaker and each other with inquiring but vacant countenances. They were puzzling themselves to think who this Randall could be, as no man of that name had ever been known in that community. When Mr. Haskins paused in his discourse, and gave his order for replenishment, Farmer Donaldson was about to remonstrate against this second treat at the expense of a stranger, and to propose that he himself should stand sponsor for the incoming refreshments. But before he could get out a word, the landlord suddenly sprang from his seat with a white, agitated face.