In the best
room were two oil portraits of the kit-cat size, representing the
landlord and his infant son; both looking as bold as lions, and
staring out of the canvas with an intensity that would have been
cheap at any price. They were painted, I think, by the artist who
had touched up the Belleville doors with red and gold; for I seemed
to recognise his style immediately.
After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that
which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with an
encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who
had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, stopped
there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was; for, hot though
it had been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew
keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of
the ancient Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound; in
memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded
a desolate convent there, many years ago, when there were no
settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the
pernicious climate: in which lamentable fatality, few rational
people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very
severe deprivation.
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