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"Just so," returned the trapper, "and we've bin told by Paul that Stalker was the only man of his band who wouldn't fall in wi' the ways o' the country, but sticks to the clumsy Jack-boots and spurs of old England.
As he began his speech, a tree-toad that had dropped down out of the tree thought to return to its lookout to see if rain were coming. As the shortest cut it took the man as a post. Scrambling over his yawning, untanned ankle jack-boots, it slipped under the equally yawning blue jeans. He commenced to scale the leg as the preacher became conscious of the invasion.
With the earliest light of the next morning, men were at work upon the river, and other men most of whom volunteered for the service- -were examining the banks. All the livelong day the search went on; upon the river, with barge and pole, and drag and net; upon the muddy and rushy shore, with jack-boots, hatchet, spade, rope, dogs, and all imaginable appliances.
The bravest man I ever knew in the army, and who had been present in most of King William's actions, as well as in the campaigns of the great Duke of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any achievement of his, except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a tree to reconnoitre the enemy, which feat he could not achieve on account of the horseman's boots he wore; and on another day that he was very nearly taken prisoner because of these jack-boots, which prevented him from running away.
As a probable peace-offering, he blacked all my boots, a duty never required of him, including a pair of buff deer-skin slippers and an immense pair of horseman's jack-boots, on which he indulged his remorse for two hours. I have spoken of his honesty as being a quality of his intellect rather than his principle, but I recall about this time two exceptions to the rule.
I could not help smiling at the utter amazement expressed upon my mother's face as she gazed at him, for the loss of his jack-boots exposed a pair of interminable spindle-shanks which were in ludicrous contrast to the baggy low country knee-breeches which surmounted them.
The pot-au-feu hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the village gossips are there the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine and on the walls Louis le bien-aimé, with baton and perruque, is balanced by Sanctus Paulus, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the "Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et Relais de France."
Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend! he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds.
Never having seen a ghost before, he naturally was terribly frightened, and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled back to his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet as he sped down the corridor, and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the Minister's jack-boots, where it was found in the morning by the butler.
The bridegroom had on a crimson doublet, which became him well; but his father's jack-boots, which he wore according to custom, were much too wide, and shook about his legs. The bride was arrayed in a scarlet velvet robe, and bodice furred with ermine. Sidonia carried a little balsam flask, depending from a gold chain which she wore round her neck.
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