CHAPTER IV.

‘Thought is deeper than all speech;Feeling deeper than all thought;Souls to souls can never teachWhat unto themselves was taught.’”

The speaker’s victim writhed, but the riveted gaze and an uplifted finger pinioned him. “You should know—every one should know—the language of gems. There is a language of flowers:

‘To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’

But the language of gems is as much more important than that of flowers as the imperishable gem is itself more enduring than the withering, the evanescent blossom. A gentleman may not with safety present to a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is ignorant. But with the language of gems understood between them, how could a sentiment be more exquisitely or more acceptably expressed than by the gift of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an unspoken eloquence! Did you but know the language of gems, your choice would not be the diamond. ‘Diamond me no diamonds,’ emblems of pride—

‘Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,I see the lords of humankind pass by.’

“Your choice would have been the pearl, symbol of modest loveliness.

‘Full many a gem of purest ray sereneThe dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;’

‘Orient pearls at random strung;’

‘Fold, little trembler, thy fluttering wing,Freely partake of love’s fathomless spring;So hallowed thy presence, the spirit withinHath whispered, “The angels protect thee from sin.”’”

The speaker ceased, with his glance hovering caressingly over the little trembler with fluttering wing, that is, the big-waisted man. The company sat in listening expectancy; and the big-waisted man, whose eyes had long ago sought refuge in the fire, lifted them and said, satirically, “Go on,” at the same time trying to buy his way out with a smile.

“It’s your turn,” quickly responded the jewel’s owner, with something droll in his manner that made the company laugh at the other’s expense. The big-waisted man kindled, then smiled again, and said:

“Was that emblem of modest loveliness give’ to you symbolically, or did you present it to yourself?”

“I took it for a debt,” replied the wearer, bowing joyously.

“Ah!” said the other. “Well, I s’pose it was either that or her furniture?”

“Thanks, yes.” There was a pause, and then the pearl’s owner spoke on. “Strange fact. That was years ago. And yet”—he fondled his gem with thumband finger and tender glance—“you’re the first man I’ve met to whom I could sincerely and symbolically present it, and you don’t want it. I’m sorry.”

“I see,” said the big-waisted man, glaring at him.

“So do I,” responded the pearl’s owner. A smile went round, and the company sat looking into the fire. Outside the wind growled and scolded, shook and slapped the house, and thrashed it with the rain. A man sitting against the chimney said:

“If this storm keeps on six hours longer I reduce my estimate of the cotton-crop sixty-five thousand bales.” But no one responded; and as the importance died out of his face he dropped his gaze into the fire with a pretence of deep meditation. Presently another, a good-looking young fellow, said:

“Well, gents, I never cared much for jewelry. But I like a nice scarf-pin; it’s nobby. And I like a handsome seal-ring.” He drew one from a rather chubby finger, and passed it to his next neighbor, following it with his eyes, and adding: “That’s said to be a real intaglio. But—now, one thing I don’t like, that’s to see a lady wear a quantity of diamond rings outside of her glove, and heavy gold chains, and”—He was interrupted. A long man, with legs stiffened out to the fire, lifted a cigar between two fingers, sent a soft jet of smoke into the air, and began monotonously:

“‘Chains on a Southern woman? Chains?’

I know the lady that wrote that piece.” He suddenly gathered himself up for some large effort. “I can’t recite it as she used to, but”—And to the joy of all he was interrupted.

“Gentlemen,” said one, throwing a cigarette stump into the fire, “that brings up the subject of the war. By the by, do you know what that war cost the Government of the United States?” He glanced from one to another until his eye reached the wearer of the pearl, who had faced about, and stood now, with the jewel glistening in the firelight, and who promptly said:

“Yes; how much?”

“Well,” said the first questioner with sudden caution, “I may be mistaken, but I’ve heard that it cost six—I think they say six—billion dollars. Didn’t it?”

“It did,” replied the other, with a smile of friendly commendation; “it cost six billion, one hundred and eighty-nine million, nine hundred and twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and eight dollars. The largest item is interest; one billion, seven hundred and one million, two hundred and fifty-six thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight dollars, forty-two cents. The next largest, the pay of troops; the next, clothing the army. If there’s any item of the war’s expenses you would like to know, ask me. Capturing president Confederate States—ninety-seven thousand and thirty-one dollars, three cents.” The speaker’s manner grew almost gay. The other smiled defensively, and responded:

“You’ve got a good memory for sta-stistics. I haven’t; and yet I always did like sta-stistics. I’m no sta-stitian, and yet if I had the time sta-stistics would be my favorite study; I s’pose it’s yours.”

The wearer of the pearl shook his head. “No. But I like it. I like the style of mind that likes it.” The two bowed with playful graciousness to each other. “Yes, I do. And I’ve studied it, some little. I can tell you the best time of every celebrated trotter in this country; the quickest trip a steamer ever made between Queenstown and New York, New York and Queenstown, New Orleans and New York; the greatest speed ever made on a railroad or by a yacht, pedestrian, carrier-pigeon, or defaulting cashier; the rate of postage to every foreign country; the excess of women over men in every State of the Union so afflicted—or blessed, according to how you look at it; the number of volumes in each of the world’s ten largest libraries; the salary of every officer of the United-States Government; the average duration of life in a man, elephant, lion, horse, anaconda, tortoise, camel, rabbit, ass, etcetera-etcetera; the age of every crowned head in Europe; each State’s legal and commercial rate of interest; and how long it takes a healthy boy to digest apples, baked beans, cabbage, dates, eggs, fish, green corn, h, i, j, k, l-m-n-o-p, quinces, rice, shrimps, tripe, veal, yams, and any thing you can cook commencing with z. It’s a fascinating study. But it’s not my favorite.

‘The proper study of mankind is man.* * * * *Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!’

“I love to study human nature. That’s my favorite study! The art of reading the inner human nature bythe outer aspect is of immeasurable interest and boundless practical value, and the man who can practise it skilfully and apply it sagaciously is on the high road to fortune, and why? Because to know it thoroughly is to know whom to trust and how far; to select wisely a friend, a confidant, a partner in any enterprise; to shun the untrustworthy, to anticipate and turn to our personal advantage the merits, faults, and deficiencies of all, and to evolve from their character such practical results as we may choose for our own ends; but a thorough knowledge is attained only by incessant observation and long practice; like music, it demands a special talent possessed by different individuals in variable quantity or not at all. You, gentlemen, all are, what I am not, commercial tourists. Before you I must be modest. You, each of you, have been chosen from surrounding hundreds or thousands for your superior ability, natural or acquired, to scan the human face and form and know whereof you see. I look you in the eye—you look me in the eye—for the eye, though it does not tell all, tells much—it is the key of character—it has been called the mirror of the soul—

‘And looks commercing with the skies,Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.’

And so looking you read me. You say to yourself, ‘There’s a man with no concealments, yet who speaks not till he’s spoken to; knows when to stop, and stops.’ You note my pale eyebrows, my slightly prominent and pointed chin, somewhat over-sizedmouth; small, well-spread ears, faintly aquiline nose; fine, thin, blonde hair, a depression in the skull where the bump of self-conceit ought to be, and you say, ‘A man that knows his talents without being vain of them; who not only minds his own business, but loves it, and who in that business, be it buggy-whips or be it washine, or be it something far nobler,’—which, let me say modestly, it is,—‘simply goes to the head of the class and stays there.’ Yes, sirs, if I say that reading the human countenance is one of my accomplishments, I am diffidently mindful that in this company, I, myself, am read, perused; no other probably so well read—I mean so exhaustively perused. For there is one thing about me, gentlemen, if you’ll allow me to say it, I’m short metre, large print, and open to the public seven days in the week. And yet you probably all make one mistake about me: you take me for the alumni of some university. Not so. I’m a self-made man. I made myself; and considering that I’m the first man I ever made, I think—pardon the seeming egotism—I think I’ve done well. A few years ago there dwelt in humble obscurity among the granite hills of New England, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow upon his father’s farm, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. But one day a voice within him said, ‘Tarbox’—George W.,—namesake of the man who never told a lie,—‘do you want to succeed in life? Then leave the production of tobacco and cider to unambitious age, and find that business wherein you can always give a man ten times as much for his dollar as his dollar is worth.’ The meaning was plain, and fromthat time forth young Tarbox aspired to become a book-agent. ’Twas not long ere he, like

‘Young Harry Bluff, left his friends and his home,And his dear native land, o’er the wide world to roam.’

Books became his line, and full soon he was the head of the line. And why? Was it because in the first short twelve months of his career he sold, delivered, and got the money for, 5107 copies of ‘Mend-me-at-Home’? No. Was it, then, because three years later he sold in one year, with no other assistance than a man to drive the horse and wagon, hold the blackboard, and hand out the books, 10,003 copies of ‘Rapid ’Rithmetic’? It was not. Was it, then, because in 1878, reading aright the public mind, he said to his publishers, whose confidence in him was unbounded, ‘It ain’t “Mend-me-at-Home” the people want most, nor “Rapid ’Rithmetic,” nor “Heal Thyself,” nor “I meet the Emergency,” nor the “Bouquet of Poetry and Song.” What they want is all these in one.’—‘Abridged?’ said the publishers. ‘Enlarged!’ said young Tarbox,—‘enlarged and copiously illustrated, complete in one volume, price, cloth, three dollars, sheep four, half morocco, gilt edges, five; real value to the subscriber, two hundred and fifty; title, “The Album of Universal Information; author, G. W. Tarbox; editor, G. W. T.; agent for the United States, the Canadas, and Mexico, G. W. Tarbox,” that is to say, myself.’ That, gentlemen, is the reason I stand at the head of my line; not merely because on every copy sold I make an author’s as well as a solicitor’smargin; but because, being the author, I know whereof I sell. A man that’s got my book has got a college education; and when a man taps me,—for, gentlemen, I never spout until I’m tapped,—and information bursts from me like water from a street hydrant, and he comes to find out that every thing I tell is in that wonderful book, and that every thing that is in that wonderful book I can tell, he wants to own a copy; and when I tell him I can’t spare my sample copy, but I’ll take his subscription, he smiles gratefully”—

A cold, wet blast, rushing into the room from the hall, betrayed the opening of the front door. The door was shut again, and a well-formed, muscular young man who had entered stood in the parlor doorway lifting his hat from his head, shaking the rain from it, and looking at it with amused diffidence. Mr. Tarbox turned about once more with his back to the fire, gave the figure a quick glance of scrutiny, then a second and longer one, and then dropped his eyes to the floor. The big-waisted man shifted his chair, tipped it back, and said:

“He smiles gratefully, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And subscribes?”

“If he’s got any sense,” Mr. Tarbox replied in a pre-occupied tone. His eyes were on the young man who still stood in the door. This person must have reached the house in some covered conveyance. Even his boot-tops were dry or nearly so. He was rather pleasing to see; of good stature, his clothing cheap.A dark-blue flannel sack of the ready-made sort hung on him not too well. Light as the garment was, he showed no sign that he felt the penetrating cold out of which he had just come. His throat and beardless face had the good brown of outdoor life, his broad chest strained the two buttons of his sack, his head was well-poised, his feet were shapely, and but for somewhat too much roundness about the shoulder-blades, noticeable in the side view as he carefully stood a long, queer package that was not buggy-whips against the hat-rack, it would have been fair to pronounce him an athlete.

The eyes of the fireside group were turned toward him; but not upon him. They rested on a girl of sixteen who had come down the hall, and was standing before the new-comer just beyond the door. The registry-book was just there on a desk in the hall. She stood with a freshly dipped pen in her hand, ignoring the gaze from the fireside with a faintly overdone calmness of face. The new guest came forward, and, in a manner that showed slender acquaintance with the operation, slowly registered his name and address.

He did it with such pains-taking, that, upside down as the writing was, she read it as he wrote. As the Christian name appeared, her perfunctory glance became attention. As the surname followed, the attention became interest and recognition. And as the address was added, Mr. Tarbox detected pleasure dancing behind the long fringe of her discreet eyes, and marked their stolen glance of quick inspection upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent overthe last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was not the entire stranger that she was to him.

“You done had sopper?” she asked. The uncommon kindness of such a question at such an hour of a tavern’s evening was lost on the young man’s obvious inexperience, and as one schooled to the hap-hazard of forest and field he merely replied:

“Naw, I didn’ had any.”

The girl turned—what a wealth of black hair she had!—and disappeared as she moved away along the hall. Her voice was heard: “Mamma?” Then there was the silence of an unheard consultation. The young man moved a step or two into the parlor and returned toward the door as a light double foot-fall approached again down the hall and the girl appeared once more, somewhat preceded by a small, tired-looking, pretty woman some thirty-five years of age, of slow, self-contained movement and clear, meditative eyes.

But the guest, too, had been re-enforced. A man had come silently from the fireside, taken his hand, and now, near the doorway, was softly shaking it and smiling. Surprise, pleasure, and reverential regard were mingled in the young man’s face, and his open mouth was gasping—

“Mister Tarbox!”

“Claude St. Pierre, after six years, I’m glad to see you.—Madame, take good care of Claude.—No fearbut she will, my boy; if anybody in Louisiana knows how to take care of a traveller, it’s Madame Beausoleil.” He smiled for all. The daughter’s large black eyes danced, but the mother asked Claude, with unmoved countenance and soft tone:

“You are Claude St. Pierre?—from Gran’ Point’?”

“Yass.”

“Dass lately since you left yondah?”

“About two month’.”

“Bonaventure Deschamps—he was well?”

“Yass.” Claude’s eyes were full of a glad surprise, and asked a question that his lips did not dare to venture upon. Madame Beausoleil read it, and she said:

“We was raise’ together, Bonaventure and me.” She waved her hand toward her daughter. “He teach her to read. Seet down to the fire; we make you some sopper.”

Out in the kitchen, while the coffee was dripping and the ham and eggs frying, the mother was very silent, and the daughter said little, but followed her now and then with furtive liftings of her young black eyes. Marguerite remembered Bonaventure Deschamps well and lovingly. For years she had seen the letters thatat long intervals came from him at Grande Pointe to her mother here. In almost every one of them she had read high praises of Claude. He had grown, thus, to be the hero of her imagination. She had wondered if it could ever happen that he would come within her sight, and if so, when, where, how. And now, here at a time of all times when it would have seemed least possible, he had, as it were, rained down.

She wondered to-night, with more definiteness of thought than ever before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little mother—Marguerite was an inch the taller—kept hid in that dear breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible heavings at the time of her father’s death, and the later silent downpour of tears when her only sister and brother were taken in one day. Since then, those eyes had rarely been wet; yet more than once or twice she had seen tears in them when they were reading a letter from Grande Pointe. Had her mother ever had something more than a sister’s love for Bonaventure? Had Bonaventure loved her? And when? Before her marriage, or after her widowhood?

The only answer that came to her as she now stood, knife in hand, by the griddle, was a roar of laughter that found its way through the hall, the dining-room, and two closed doors, from the men about the waiting-room fireside. That was the third time she had heard it. What could have put them so soon into such gay mood? Could it be Claude? Somehow she hoped it was not. Her mother reminded her that the batter-cakes would burn. She quickly turned them. The laugh came again.

When by and by she went to bid Claude to his repast, the laughter, as she reached the door of the waiting-room, burst upon her as the storm would have done had she opened the front door. It came from all but Claude and Mr. Tarbox. Claude sat with a knee in his hands, smiling. The semicircle had widened out from the fire, and in the midst Mr. Tarbox stood telling a story, of which Grande Pointe was the scene, Bonaventure Deschamps the hero, a school-examination the circumstance, and he, G. W., the accidental arbiter of destinies that hung upon its results. The big-waisted man had retired for the night, and half an eye could see that the story-teller had captivated the whole remaining audience. He was just at the end as Marguerite re-appeared at the door. The laugh suddenly ceased, and then all rose; it was high bedtime.

“And did they get married?” asked one. Three or four gathered close to hear the answer.

“Who? Sidonie and Bonnyventure? Yes. I didn’t stay to see. I went away into Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, and just only a few weeks ago took a notion to try this Attakapas and Opelousas region. But that’s what Claude tells me to-night—married more than five years ago.—Claude, your supper wants you. Want me to go out and sit with you? Oh, no trouble! not the slightest! It will make me feel as if I was nearer to Bonnyventure.”

And so the group about Claude’s late supper numbered four. And because each had known Bonaventure, though each in a very different way from any other, they were four friends when Claude haddemolished the ham and eggs, the strong black coffee, and the griddle-cakes and sirop-de-batterie.

At the top of the hall stairway, as Mr. Tarbox was on his way to bed, one of the dispersed fireside circle stopped him, saying:

“That’s an awful good story!”

“I wouldn’t try a poor one on you.”

“Oh!—but really, now, in good earnest, it is good. It’s good in more ways than one. Now, you know, that man, hid away there in the swamp at Grande Pointe, he little thinks that six or eight men away off here in Vermilionville are going to bed to-night better men—that’s it, sir—yes, sir, that’s it—yes, sir!—better men—just for having heard of him!”

Mr. Tarbox smiled with affectionate approval, and began to move away; but the other put out a hand—

“Say, look here; I’m going away on that two o’clock train to-night. I want that book of yours. And I don’t want to subscribe and wait. I want the book now. That’s my way. I’m just that kind of a man; I’m the nowest man you ever met up with. That book’s just the kind of thing for a man like me who ain’t got no time to go exhaustively delving and investigating and researching into things, and yet has got to keep as sharp as a brier.”

Mr. Tarbox, on looking into his baggage, found he could oblige this person. Before night fell again he had done virtually the same thing, one by one, for all the rest. By that time they were all gone; but Mr. Tarbox made Vermilionville his base of operations for several days.

Claude also tarried. For reasons presently to appear, the “ladies parlor,” a small room behind the waiting-room, with just one door, which let into the hall at the hall’s inner end, was given up to his use; and of evenings not only Mr. Tarbox, but Marguerite and her mother as well, met with him, gathering familiarly about a lamp that other male lodgers were not invited to hover around.

The group was not idle. Mr. Tarbox held big hanks of blue and yellow yarn, which Zoséphine wound off into balls. A square table quite filled the centre of the room. There was a confusion of objects on it, and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned over it and slowly toiled, from morning until evening alone, and in the evening with these three about him; Marguerite, with her sewing dropped upon the floor, watching his work with an interest almost wholly silent, only making now and then a murmured comment, her eyes passing at intervals from his pre-occupied eyes to his hands, and her hand now and then guessing and supplying his want as he looked for one thing or another that had got out of sight. What was he doing?

As to Marguerite, more than he was aware of, Zoséphine Beausoleil saw, and was already casting about somewhat anxiously in her mind to think what, if any thing, ought to be done about it. She saw her child’s sewing lie forgotten on the floor, and the eyes that should have been following the needle, fixed often on the absorbed, unconscious, boyish-manly face so near by. She saw them scanning the bent brows, thesmooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and the unusual length of dark eyelashes that gave its charm to the whole face; and she saw them quickly withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship broke slowly about the relaxing lips and the soft, deep-curtained eyes. No; Claude little knew what he was doing. Neither did Marguerite. But, aside from her, what was his occupation? I will explain.

About five weeks earlier than this, a passenger on an eastward-bound train of Morgan’s Louisiana and Texas Railway stood at the rear door of the last coach, eying critically the track as it glided swiftly from under the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The coach was nearly empty. No one was near him save the brakeman, and by and by he took his attention from the track and let it rest on this person. There he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face before, or why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead, and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and axe-strokes—heard but unseen—slashing through them only a few feet away? Suddenly he knew.

“Wasn’t it your father,” he said, “who was my guide up Bayou des Acadiens and Blind River the time I made the survey in that big swamp north of Grande Pointe? Isn’t your name Claude St. Pierre?” And presently they were acquainted.

“You know I took a great fancy to your father. And you’ve been clear through the arithmetic twice?Why, see here; you’re just the sort of man I—Look here; don’t you want to learn to be a surveyor?” The questioner saw that same ambition which had pleased him so in the father, leap for joy in the son’s eyes.

An agreement was quickly reached. Then the surveyor wandered into another coach, and nothing more passed between them that day save one matter, which, though trivial, has its place. When the surveyor returned to the rear train, Claude was in a corner seat gazing pensively through the window and out across the wide, backward-flying, purpling green cane-fields of St. Mary, to where on the far left the live-oaks of Bayou Teche seemed hoveringly to follow on the flank of their whooping and swaggering railway-train. Claude turned and met the stranger’s regard with a faint smile. His new friend spoke first.

“Matters may turn out so that we can have your father”—

Claude’s eyes answered with a glad flash. “Dass what I was t’inkin’!” he said, with a soft glow that staid even when he fell again into revery.

But when the engineer—for it seems that he was an engineer, chief of a party engaged in redeeming some extensive waste swamp and marsh lands—when the chief engineer, on the third day afterward, drew near the place where he suddenly recollected Claude would be waiting to enter his service, and recalled this part of their previous interview, he said to himself, “No, it would be good for the father, but not best for the son,” and fell to thinking how often parents arecalled upon to wrench their affections down into cruel bounds to make the foundations of their children’s prosperity.

Claude widened to his new experience with the rapidity of something hatched out of a shell. Moreover, accident was in his favor; the party was short-handed in its upper ranks, and Claude found himself by this stress taken into larger and larger tasks as fast as he could, though ever so crudely, qualify for them.

“’Tisn’t at all the best thing for you,” said one of the surveyors, “but I’ll lend you some books that will teach you the why as well as the how.”

In the use of these books by lantern-light certain skill with the pen showed itself; and when at length one day a despatch reached camp from the absent “chief” stating that in two or three days certain matters would take him to Vermilionville, and ordering that some one be sent at once with all necessary field notes and appliances, and give his undivided time to the making of certain urgently needed maps, and the only real draughtsman of the party was ill with swamp-fever, Claude was sent.

On his last half-day’s journey toward the place, he had fallen in with an old gentleman whom others called “Governor,” a tall, trim figure, bent but little under fourscore years, with cheerful voice and ready speech, and eyes hidden behind dark glasses and flickering in their deep sockets.

“Go to Madame Beausoleil’s,” he advised Claude. “That is the place for you. Excellent person; I’ve known her from childhood; a woman worthy a higherstation.” And so, all by accident, chance upon chance, here was Claude making maps; and this delightful work, he thought, was really all he was doing, in Zoséphine’s little inner parlor.

By and by it was done. The engineer had not yet arrived. The storm had delayed work in one place and undone work in another, and he was detained beyond expectation. But a letter said he would come in a day or two more, and some maps of earlier surveys, drawn by skilled workmen in great New Orleans, arrived; seeing which, Claude blushed for his own and fell to work to make them over.

“If at first you not succeed,” said Claude,—

“Try—try aga-a-ain,” responded Marguerite; “Bonaventure learn me that poetry; and you?”

“Yass,” said Claude. He stood looking down at his work and not seeing it. What he saw was Grande Pointe in the sunset hour of a spring day six years gone, the wet, spongy margin of a tiny bayou under his feet, the great swamp at his back, the leafy undergrowth all around; his canoe and paddle waiting for him, and Bonaventure repeating to him—swamp urchin of fourteen—the costliest words of kindness—to both of them the costliest—that he had ever heard, ending with these two that Marguerite had spoken. As he resumed his work, he said, without lifting his eyes:

“Seem’ to me ’f I could make myself like any man in dat whole worl’, I radder make myself like Bonaventure. And you?”

She was so slow to answer that he looked at her.Even then she merely kept on sweeping her fingers slowly and idly back and forth on the table, and, glancing down upon them, said without enthusiasm: “Yass.”

Yet they both loved Bonaventure, each according to knowledge of him. Nor did their common likings stop with him. The things he had taught Claude to love and seek suddenly became the admiration of Marguerite. Aspirations—aspirations!—began to stir and hum in her young heart, and to pour forth like waking bees in the warm presence of spring. Claude was a new interpretation of life to her; as one caught abed by the first sunrise at sea, her whole spirit leaped, with unmeasured self-reproach, into fresh garments and to a new and beautiful stature, and looked out upon a wider heaven and earth than ever it had seen or desired to see before. All at once the life was more than meat and the body than raiment. Presently she sprang to action. In the convent school, whose white belfry you could see from the end of Madame Beausoleil’s balcony, whither Zoséphine had sent her after teaching her all she herself knew, it had been “the mind for knowledge;” now it was “knowledge for the mind.” Mental training and enrichment had a value now, never before dreamed of. The old school-books were got down, recalled from banishment. Nothing ever had been hard to learn, and now she found that all she seemed to have forgotten merely required, like the books, a little beating clear of dust.

And Claude was there to help. “If C”——C!—--“having a start of one hundred miles, travels”—soand so, and so and so,—“how fast must I travel in order to”—etc. She cannot work the problem for thinking of what it symbolizes. As C himself takes the slate, her dark eyes, lifted an instant to his, are large with painful meaning, for she sees at a glance she must travel—if the arithmetical is the true answer—more than the whole distance now between them. But Claude says there is an easy way. She draws her chair nearer and nearer to his; he bows over the problem, and she cannot follow his pencil without bending her head very close to his—closer—closer—until fluffy bits of her black hair touch the thick locks on his temples. Look to your child, Zoséphine Beausoleil, look to her! Ah! she can look; but what can she do?

She saw the whole matter; saw more than merely an unripe girl smitten with the bright smile, goodly frame, and bewitching eyes of a promising young rustic; saw her heart ennobled, her nature enlarged, and all the best motives of life suddenly illuminated by the presence of one to be mated with whom promised the key-note of all harmonies; promised heart-fellowship in the ever-hoping effort to lift poor daily existence higher and higher out of the dust and into the light. What could she say? If great spirits in men or maidens went always or only with high fortune, a mere Acadian lass, a tavern maiden, were safe enough, come one fate or another. If Marguerite were like many a girl in high ranks and low, to whom any husband were a husband, any snug roof a home, and any living life—But what may a maiden do, ora mother bid her do, when she looks upon the youth so shaped without and within to her young soul’s belief in its wants, that all other men are but beasts of the field and creeping things, and he alone Adam? To whom could the widow turn? Father, mother?—Gone to their rest. The curé who had stood over her in baptism, marriage, and bereavement?—Called long ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. Already his generous interest had explored her pecuniary affairs, and his suggestions, too good to be ignored, had moulded them into better shape, and enlarged their net results. And he could tell how many eight-ounce tacks make a pound, and what electricity is, and could cure a wart in ten minutes, and recite “Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” And this evening, the seventh since the storm, when for one weak moment she had allowed the conversation to drift toward wedlock, he had stated a woman’s chances of marrying between the ages of fifteen and twenty, to wit, 14½ per cent; and between thirty and thirty-five, 15½.

“Hah!” exclaimed Zoséphine, her eyes flashing as they had not done in many a day, “’tis not dat way!—not in Opelousas!”

“Arithmetically speaking!” the statistician quickly explained. He ventured to lay a forefinger on theback of her hand, but one glance of her eye removed it. “You see, that’s merely arithmetically considered. Now, of course, looking at it geographically—why, of course! And—why, as to that, there are ladies”—

Madame Beausoleil rose, left Mr. Tarbox holding the yarn, and went down the hall, whose outer door had opened and shut. A moment later she entered the room again.

“Claude!”

Marguerite’s heart sank. Her guess was right: the chief engineer had come. And early in the morning Claude was gone.

Such strange things storms do,—here purifying the air, yonder treading down rich harvests, now replenishing the streams, and now strewing shores with wrecks; here a blessing, there a calamity. See what this one had done for Marguerite! Well, what? She could not lament; she dared not rejoice. Oh! if she were Claude and Claude were she, how quickly—

She wondered how many miles a day she could learn to walk if she should start out into the world on foot to find somebody, as she had heard that Bonaventure had once done to find her mother’s lover. There are no Bonaventures now, she thinks, in these decayed times.

“Mamma,”—her speech was French,—“why do we never see Bonaventure? How far is it to Grande Pointe?”

“Ah! my child, a hundred miles; even more.”

“And to my uncle Rosamond’s,—Rosamond Robichaux, on Bayou Terrebonne?”

“Fully as far, and almost the same journey.”

There was but one thing to be done,—crush Claude out of her heart.

The storm had left no wounds on Grande Pointe. Every roof was safe, even the old tobacco-shed where Bonaventure had kept school before the schoolhouse was built. The sheltering curtains of deep forest had broken the onset of the wind, and the little cotton, corn, and tobacco fields, already harvested, were merely made a little more tattered and brown. The November air was pure, sunny, and mild, and thrilled every now and then with the note of some lingering bird. A green and bosky confusion still hid house from house and masked from itself the all but motionless human life of the sleepy woods village. Only an adventitious China-tree here and there had been stripped of its golden foliage, and kept but its ripened berries with the red birds darting and fluttering around them like so many hiccoughing Comanches about a dramseller’s tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so painful, our old friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting the berries’ rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you know,—“Lost so many children, and the rest goneoff in ungrateful forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;” and ready to sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad enough, even for a man; but for a bird—and a mocking-bird!

But the storm wrought a great change in one small house not in Grande Pointe, yet of it. Until the storm, ever since the day St. Pierre had returned from the little railway-station where Claude had taken the cars, he had seemed as patiently resigned to the new loneliness of Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the hut’s solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought of Claude, there was a great difference inside. And this did not diminish; it grew. It is hard for a man to be both father and mother, and at the same time be childless. The bonds of this condition began slowly to tighten around St. Pierre’s heart and then to cut into it. And so, the same day on which Claude in Vermilionville left the Beausoleils’ tavern, the cabin on Bayou des Acadiens, ever in his mind’s eye, was empty, and in Grande Pointe his father stood on the one low step at the closed door of Bonaventure’s little frame schoolhouse.

He had been there a full minute and had not knocked. Every movement, to-day, came only after an inward struggle. Many associations crowded his mind on this doorstep. Six years before, almost on this spot, a mere brier-patch then, he and Maximian Roussel had risen from the grassy earth and given the first two welcoming hand-grasps to the schoolmaster. And now, as one result, Claude, who did not know his letters then, was rising—nay, had risen—to greatness! Claude, whom once he would have been glad to make a good fisherman and swamper, or at the utmost a sugar-boiler, was now a greater, in rank at least, than the very schoolmaster. Truly “knowledge is power”—alas! yes; for it had stolen away that same Claude. The College Point priest’s warning had come true: it was “good-by to Grande Pointe!”—Nay, nay, it must not be! Is that the kind of power education is? Power to tear children from their parents? Power to expose their young heads to midnight storms? Power to make them eager to go, and willing to stay away, from their paternal homes? Then indeed the priest had said only too truly, that these public schools teach every thing except morals and religion! From the depth of St. Pierre’s heart there quickly came a denial of the charge; and on the moment, like a chanted response, there fell upon his listening ear a monotonous intonation from within the door. A reading-class had begun its exercise. He knew the words by heart, so often had Claude and he read them together. He followed the last stanza silently with his own lips.

“Remember, child, rememberThat you love, with all your might,The God who watches o’er usAnd gives us each delight,Who guards us ever in the day,And saves as in the night.”

Tears filled the swamper’s eyes. He moved as if to leave the place. But again he paused, with one foot half lowered to the ground. His jaws set, a frown came between his eyes; he drew back the foot, turned again to the door, and gave a loud, peremptory knock.

Bonaventure came to the door. Anxiety quickly overspread his face as he saw the gloom on St. Pierre’s. He stood on the outer edge of the sill, and drew the door after him.

“I got good news,” said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance.

“Good news?”

“Yass.—I goin’ make Claude come home.”

Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked away and continued:

“’S no use. Can’t stand it no longer.” He turned suddenly upon the schoolmaster. “Why you di’n’ tell me ed’cation goin’ teck my boy ’way from me?” In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.

“Wait!” he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre in the open door, and said:

“Dear chil’run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete.”

The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the schoolmaster’s hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the educator to Grande Pointe.

“Dear friend,” said the schoolmaster, “shall education be to blame for this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for Claude’s staying?”

“You stay!”

“I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,—ah! friend, what shall I,—shall Claude,—shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a miser his gol’? What shall the ship do when she is load’? Dear friend,”—they halted where another road started away through the underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,—“where leads this narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the whole worl’? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering, ‘Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute’ you citizen of the worl’. Come, come, forgetting self!’ Oh, dear friend, education is not for self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!”

“Well, den,”—the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,—“self not for self,—for what he gone off and lef’ me in de swamp?”

“Ah, sir!” replied Bonaventure, “what do I unceasingly tell those dear school-chil’run? ‘May we not make the most of self, yet not for self?’” He laid his hand upon St. Pierre’s shoulder. “And who sent Claude hence if not his unselfish father?”

“I was big fool,” said St. Pierre, whittling on.

“Nay, wise! Discovering the great rule of civilize-ation. Every man not for self, but for every other!”

The swamper disclaimed the generous imputation with a shake of the head.

“Naw, I dunno nut’n’ ’bout dat. I look out for me and my boy, me.—And beside,”—he abruptly threw away the staff he had trimmed, shut his knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket,—“I dawn’t see ed’cation make no diff’ence. You say ed’cation—priest say religion—me, I dawn’t see neider one make no diff’ence. I see every man look out for hisself and his li’l’ crowd. Not you, but”—He waved his hand bitterly toward the world at large.

“Ah, sir!” cried Bonaventure, “’tis not something what you can see all the time, like the horns on a cow! And yet, sir,—and yet!”—he lifted himself upon tiptoe and ran his fingers through his thin hair—“the education that make’ no difference is but a dead body! and the religion that make’ no difference is a ghost!Behole! behole two thing’ in the worl’, where all is giving and getting, two thing’, contrary, yet resem’ling! ’Tis the left han’—alas, alas!—giving only to get; and the right, blessed of God, getting only to give! How much resem’ling, yet how contrary! The one—han’ of all strife; the other—of all peace. And oh! dear friend, there are those who call the one civilize-ation, and the other religion. Civilize-ation? Religion? They are one! They are body and soul! I care not what religion the priest teach you; in God’s religion is comprise’ the totalmécaniqueof civilize-ation. We are all in it; you, me, Claude, Sidonie; all in it! Each and every at his task, however high, however low, working not to get, but to give, and not to give only to his own li’l’ crowd, but to all, to all!” The speaker ceased, for his hearer was nodding his head with sceptical impatience.

“Yass,” said the woodman, “yass; but look, Bonaventure. Di’n’ you said one time, ‘Knowledge is power’?”

“Yes, truly; and it is.”

“But what use knowledge be power if goin’ give ev’t’in’ away?”

Bonaventure drew back a step or two, suddenly jerked his hat from his head, and came forward again with arms stretched wide and the hat dangling from his hand. “Because—because God will not let it sta-a-ay given away! ‘Give—it shall be give’ to you.’ Every thing given out into God’s worl’ come back to us roun’ God’s worl’! Resem’ling the stirring of water in a bucket.”

But St. Pierre frowned. “Yass,—wat’ in bucket,—yass. Den no man dawn’t keep nut’n’. Dawn’t own nut’n’ he got.”

“Ah! sir, there is a better owning than toown. ’Tis giving, dear friend; ’tis giving. To get? To have? That is not to own. The giver, not the getter; the giver! he is the true owner. Live thou not to get, but to give.” Bonaventure’s voice trembled; his eyes were full of tears.

The swamper stood up with his own eyes full, but his voice was firm. “Bonaventure, I don’t got much. I got dat li’l’ shanty on Bayou des Acadiens, and li’l’ plunder inside—few kittle’, and pan’,—cast-net, fish-line’, two, t’ree gun’, and—my wife’ grave, yond’ in graveyard. But I got Claude,—my boy, my son. You t’ink God want me give my son to whole worl’?”

The schoolmaster took the woodsman’s brown wrist tenderly into both his hands, and said, scarce above a whisper, “He gave His, first. He started it. Who can refuse, He starting it? And thou wilt not refuse.” The voice rose—“I see, I see the victory! Well art thou nominated ‘St. Pierre!’ for on that rock of giving”—

“Naw, sir! Stop!” The swamper dashed the moisture from his eyes and summoned a look of stubborn resolve. “Mo’ better you call me St. Pierre because I’m a fisherman what cuss when I git mad. Look! You dawn’t want me git Claude back in Gran’ Point’. You want me to give, give. Well, all right! I goin’quitGran’ Point’ and give myself, me, toClaude. I kin read, I kin write, I t’ink kin do better ’long wid Claude dan livin’ all ’lone wid snake’ and alligator. I t’ink dass mo’ better for everybody; and anyhow, I dawn’t care; I dawn’t give my son to nobody; I give myself to Claude.”

Bonaventure and his friend gazed into each other’s wet eyes for a moment. Then the schoolmaster turned, lifted his eyes and one arm toward the west, and exclaimed:

“Ah, Claude! thou receivest the noblest gift in Gran’ Point’!”

On the prairies of Vermilion and Lafayette, winter is virtually over by the first week in February. From sky to sky, each tree and field, each plain and plantation grove, are putting on the greenery of a Northern May. Even on Côte Gelée the housewife has persuadedle vieuxto lay aside his gun, and the early potatoes are already planted. If the moon be at the full, much ground is ready for the sower; and those ploughmen and pony teams and men working along behind them with big, clumsy hoes, over in yonder field, are planting corn. Those silent, tremulous strands of black that in the morning sky come gliding, high overhead, from the direction of the greatsea-marshes and fade into the northern blue, are flocks that have escaped the murderous gun of the pot-hunter. Spring and Summer are driving these before them as the younger and older sister, almost abreast, come laughing, and striving to outrun each other across the Mexican Gulf.

Those two travellers on horseback, so dwarfed by distance, whom you see approaching out of the north-west, you shall presently find have made, in their dress, no provision against cold. At Carancro, some miles away to the north-east, there is a thermometer; and somewhere in Vermilionville, a like distance to the south-east, there might possibly be found a barometer; but there is no need of either to tell that the air to-day is threescore and ten and will be more before it is less. Before the riders draw near you have noticed that only one is a man and the other a woman. And now you may see that he is sleek and alert, blonde and bland, and the savage within us wants to knock off his silk hat. All the more so for that she is singularly pretty to be met in his sole care. The years count on her brows, it is true, but the way in which they tell of matronhood—and somehow of widowhood too—is a very fair and gentle way. Her dress is plain, but its lines have a grace that is also dignity; and the lines of her face—lines is too hard a word for them—are not those of time, but of will and of care, that have chastened and refined one another. She speaks only now and then. Her companion’s speech fills the wide intervals.

“Yesterday morning,” he says, “as I came alonghere a little after sunrise, there was a thin fog lying only two or three feet deep, close to the level ground as far as you could see, hiding the whole prairie, and making it look for all the world like a beautiful lake, with every here and there a green grove standing out of it like a real little island.”

She replies that she used to see it so in her younger days. The Acadian accent is in her words. She lifts her black eyes, looks toward Carancro, and is silent.

“You’re thinking of the changes,” says her escort.

“Yass;’tisso. Dey got twenty time’ many field’ like had befo’. Peop’ don’t raise cattl’ no more; raise crop’. Dey say even dat land changin’.”

“How changing?”

“I dunno. I dunno if’tisso. Dey say prairie risin’ mo’ higher every year. I dunno if’tisso. I t’ink dat land don’t change much; but de peop’, yass.”

“Still, the changes are mostly good changes,” responds the male rider. “’Tisn’t the prairie, but the people that are rising. They’ve got the schoolhouse, and the English language, and a free paid labor system, and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and sewing-machines, and melodeons, and Horsford’s Acid Phosphate; and they’ve caught the spirit of progress!”

“Yass,’tisso. Dawn’t see nobody seem satisfied—since de army—since de railroad.”

“Well, that’s right enough; they oughtn’t to be satisfied. You’re not satisfied, are you? And yet you’ve never done so well before as you have this season. I wish I could say the same for the ‘Albumof Universal Information;’ but I can’t. I tell you that, Madame Beausoleil; I wouldn’t tell anybody else.”

Zoséphine responds with a dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox’s modest loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude, discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking. Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her father’s small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the sagacity of Mr. Tarbox’s advice in pecuniary matters, and once and once again, when he has told her quietly of some little operation into which he and the ex-governor—who “thinks the world of me,” he says—were going to dip, and she has accepted his invitation to venture in also, to the extent of a single thousand dollars, the money has come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale of all her prairie lands to her former kinsmen-in-law, which brought her out here yesterday and lets her return this morning, is made upon his suggestion, and is so advantageous that somehow, she doesn’t knowwhy, she almost fears it isn’t fair to the other side. The fact is, the country is passing from the pastoral to the agricultural life, the prairies are being turned into countless farms, and the people are getting wealth. So explains Mr. Tarbox, whose happening to come along this morning bound in her direction is pure accident—pure accident.

“No, the ‘A. of U. I.’ hasn’t done its best,” he says again. “For one thing, I’ve had other fish to fry. You know that.” He ventures a glance at her eyes, but they ignore it, and he adds, “I mean other financial matters.”

“’Tisso,” says Zoséphine; and Mr. Tarbox hopes the reason for this faint repulse is only the nearness of this farmhouse peeping at them through its pink veil of blossoming peach-trees, as they leisurely trot by.

“Yes,” he says; “and, besides, ‘Universal Information’ isn’t what this people want. The book’s too catholic for them.”

“Too Cat’oleek!” Zoséphine raises her pretty eyebrows in grave astonishment—“’Cadian’ is all Cat’oleek.”

“Yes, yes, ecclesiastically speaking, I know. That wasn’t my meaning. Your smaller meaning puts my larger one out of sight; yes, just as this Cherokee hedge puts out of sight the miles of prairie fields, and even that house we just passed. No, the ‘A. of U. I.,’—I love to call it that; can you guess why?” There is a venturesome twinkle in his smile, and even a playful permission in her own as she shakes her head.

“Well, I’ll tell you; it’s because it brings U and I so near together.”

“Hah!” exclaims Madame Beausoleil, warningly, yet with sunshine and cloud on her brow at once. She likes her companion’s wit, always so deep, and yet always so delicately pointed! His hearty laugh just now disturbs her somewhat, but they are out on the wide plain again, without a spot in all the sweep of her glance where an eye or an ear may ambush them or their walking horses.

“No,” insists her fellow-traveller; “I say again, as I said before, the ‘A. of U. I.’”—he pauses at the initials, and Zoséphine’s faint smile gives him ecstasy—“hasn’t done its best. And yet it has done beautifully! Why, when did you ever see such a list as this?” He dexterously draws from an extensive inner breast-pocket, such as no coat but a book-agent’s or a shoplifter’s would be guilty of, a wide, limp, morocco-bound subscription-book. “Here!” He throws it open upon the broad Texas pommel. “Now, just for curiosity, look at it—oh! you can’t see it from away off there, looking at it sideways!” He gives her a half-reproachful, half-beseeching smile and glance, and gathers up his dropped bridle. They come closer. Their two near shoulders approach each other, the two elbows touch, and two dissimilar hands hold down the leaves. The two horses playfully bite at each other; it is their way of winking one eye.

“Now, first, here’s the governor’s name; and then his son’s, and his nephew’s, and his other son’s, and his cousin’s. And here’s Pierre Cormeaux, andBaptiste Clément, you know, at Carancro; and here’s Basilide Sexnailder, and Joseph Cantrelle, and Jacques Hébert; see? And Gaudin, and Laprade, Blouin, and Roussel,—old Christofle Roussel of Beau Bassin,—Duhon, Roman and Simonette Le Blanc, and Judge Landry, and Thériot,—Colonel Thériot,—Martin, Hébert again, Robichaux, Mouton, Mouton again, Robichaux again, Mouton—oh, I’ve got ’em all!—Castille, Beausoleil—cousin of yours? Yes, he said so; good fellow, thinks you’re the greatest woman alive.” The two dissimilar hands, in turning a leaf, touch, and the smaller one leaves the book. “And here’s Guilbeau, and Latiolais, and Thibodeaux, and Soudrie, and Arcenaux—flowers of the community—‘I gather them in,’—and here’s a page of Côte Gelée people, and—Joe Jefferson hadn’t got back to the Island yet, but I’ve got his son; see? And here’s—can you make out this signature? It’s written so small”—

Both heads,—with only the heavens and the dear old earth-mother to see them,—both heads bend over the book; the hand that had retreated returns, but bethinks itself and withdraws again; the eyes of Mr. Tarbox look across their corners at the sedate brow so much nearer his than ever it has been before, until that brow feels the look, and slowly draws away. Look to your mother, Marguerite; look to her! But Marguerite is not there, not even in Vermilionville; nor yet in Lafayette parish; nor anywhere throughout the wide prairies of Opelousas or Attakapas. Triumph fills Mr. Tarbox’s breast.

“Well,” he says, restoring the book to its hiding-place, “seems like I ought to be satisfied with that; doesn’t it to you?”

It does; Zoséphine says so. She sees the double meaning, and Mr. Tarbox sees that she sees it, but must still move cautiously. So he says:

“Well, I’m not satisfied. It’s perfect as far as it goes, but don’t expect me to be satisfied with it. If I’ve seemed satisfied, shall I tell you why it was, my dear—friend?”

Zoséphine makes no reply; but her dark eyes meeting his for a moment, and then falling to her horse’s feet, seem to beg for mercy.

“It’s because,” says Mr. Tarbox, while her heart stands still, “it’s because I’ve made”—there is an awful pause—“more money without the ‘A. of U. I.’ this season than I’ve made with it.”

Madame Beausoleil catches her breath, shows relief in every feature, lifts her eyes with sudden brightness, and exclaims:

“Dass good! Dass mighty good, yass!’Tisso.”

“Yes, it is; and I tell you, and you only, because I’m proud to believe you’re my sincere friend. Am I right?”

Zoséphine busies herself with her riding-skirt, shifts her seat a little, and with studied carelessness assents.

“Yes,” her companion repeats; “and so I tell you. The true business man is candid to all, communicative to none. And yet I open my heart to you. I can’t help it; it won’t stay shut. And you must see, I’msure you must, that there’s something more in there besides money; don’t you?” His tone grows tender.

Madame Beausoleil steals a glance toward him,—a grave, timid glance. She knows there is safety in the present moment. Three horsemen, strangers, far across the field in their front, are coming toward them, and she feels an almost proprietary complacence in a suitor whom she can safely trust to be saying just the right nothings when those shall meet them and ride by. She does not speak; but he says:

“You know there is, dear Jos——friend!” He smiles with modest sweetness. “G. W. Tarbox doesn’t run after money, and consequently he never runs past much without picking it up.” They both laugh in decorous moderation. The horsemen are drawing near; they are Acadians. “I admit I love to make money. But that’s not my chief pleasure. My chief pleasure is the study of human nature.

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