them as the younger and older sister, almost abreast, come laughing, and striving to outrun each other across the Mexican Gulf. Those two travelers 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 northeast, there is a thermometer; and somewhere in Vermillionville, a like distance to the southeast, 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 in which they tell of matronhoodand 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, refined, one another. She speaks only now and then. Her companion's speech fills the wide intervals. way "Yesterday morning," he says, " as I came along here 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 "I dunno. I dunno if 't is so. Dey say prairie risin' mo' higher every year. I dunno if 't is so. I t'ink dat land don't change much; but de peop', yass." "Still, the changes are mostly good changes," responds the male rider. "T is n't the prairie, but the people that are rising. They 've got the school-house, and the English language, and a free, paid labor system, and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and sewing-machines, and melo deons, and Horsford's Acid Phosphate; and they 've caught the spirit of progress!" "Yass, 'tis so. Dawn't see nobody seem satisfied since de army since de railroad." "Well, that's right enough; they ought n'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 Album of Universal Information'; but I can't. I tell you that, Madame Beausoleil; I would n'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 does n't know why, she almost fears it is n'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.' has n'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." "Tis so," says Zoséphine; and Mr. Tarbox hopes the reason for this faint repulse is only the nearness of this farm-house peeping at them through its pink veil of blossoming peachtrees, as they leisurely trot by. "Yes," he says; "and, besides, 'Universal Information' is n'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 was n'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 you 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-traveler; "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-"has n'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 bookagent'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 Pierre Cormeaux, and Baptiste Clement, you know, at Carancro; and here's Bazilide Sexnailder, and Joseph Cantrelle, and Jacques Hebert; 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, Hebert 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 had n'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 Vermillionville; 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; does n'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! 'Tis so." "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 ridingskirt, 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 'm sure 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 does n'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. "The proper study of mankind is man. "This season I've been studying these Acadian people. And I like them! They don't like to be reminded that they 're Acadians. Well, that's natural; the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the Creoles were slaveholding planters and they were small farmers. That's about past now. The Acadians are descended from peasants, that 's true, while some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, hooh! would n't any fair-minded person"— the horsemen are within earshot; they are staring at the silk hat-"Adjieu." "Adjieu." They pass. "- Would n't any fair-minded person that knows what France was two or three hundred years ago-show you some day in the 'Album' about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dearfriend, the day 's coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They 're the only white people that ever trod this continent-island or mainland — who never on their own account oppressed anybody. Some little depredation on their British neighbors, out of dogged faithfulness to their king and church,- that 's the worst charge you can make. Look at their history! all poetry and pathos! Look at their character! brave, peaceable, loyal, industrious, home-loving But Zoséphine is looking at the speaker. Her face is kindled with the inspiration of his praise. His own eyes grow ardent. "Look at their women! Ah, Josephine, I'm looking at one! Don't turn away. "One made up Of loveliness alone; "The reason firm, the temperate will, "You can't stop me, Josephine; it's got to come, and come right now. I'm a homeless man, Josephine, tired of wandering, with a heart bigger and weaker than I ever thought I had. I want you! I love you! I've never loved anybody before in my life except myself, and I don't find myself as lovely as I used. Oh, take me, Josephine! I don't ask you to love as if you'd never loved another. I'll take what's left, and be perfectly satisfied! I know you 're ambitious, and I love you for that! But I do think I can give you a larger life. With you for a wife, I believe I could be a man you need n't be ashamed of. I'm already at the head of my line. Best record in the United States, Josephine, whether by the day, week, month, year, or locality. But if you don't like the line, I'll throw up the 'A. of U. I.' and go into anything you say; for I want to lift you higher, Josephine. You 're above me already, by nature and by rights, but I can lift you, I know I can. You 've got no business keeping tavern; you 're one of Nature's aristocrats. Yes, you are! and you 're too young and lovely to stay a widow — in a State where there's more men than there 's women. There's a good deal of the hill yet to climb before you start down. Oh, let 's climb it together, Josephine! I'll make you happier than you are, Josephine; I haven't got a bad habit left; such as I had, I 've quit; it don't pay. I don't drink, chew, smoke, tell lies, swear, quarrel, play cards, make debts, nor belong to a club- be my wife! Your daughter 'll soon be leaving you. You can't be happy alone. Take me! take me!" He urges his horse close her face is averted- and lays his hand softly but firmly on her two, resting folded on the saddle-horn. They struggle faintly and are still; but she slowly shakes her hanging head. "O Josephine! you don't mean no, do you? Look this way! you don't mean no?" He presses his hand passionately down upon hers. Her eyes do not turn to his; but they are lifted tearfully to the vast, unanswering sky, and as she mournfully shakes her head again, she cries, "I dunno! I dunno! I can't tell! I got to see Marguerite." "Well, you'll see her in an hour, and if she "Naw, naw! 't is not so; Marguerite is in New Orleans since Christmas." Very late in the evening of that day Mr. Tarbox entered the principal inn of St. Martinville, on the Teche. He wore an air of blitheness which, though silent, was overdone. As he pushed his silk hat back on his head and registered his name with a more than usual largeness of hand, he remarked: "Man wants but little here below, no! Her mother gave an explanation interesting and reasonable enough, and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic. Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies taught better there than in Opelousas; especially music. Back of this was a reason which she had her mother's promise not to mention: the physician's recommendation -a change of scene. He spoke of slight malarial influences and how many odd forms they took; of dyspepsia and its queer freaks; of the confining nature of house cares, and of how often they " ran down the whole system." His phrases were French, but they had all the weary triteness of these; while Marguerite rejoiced that he did not suspect the real ailment, and Zoséphine saw that “Give me a short piece of candle and a he divined it perfectly. stumpy candlestick — and "Take me up, and bear me hence "Glad to see you back, Mr. Tarbox," Mr. Tarbox fixed him with his eye, drew a soft step closer, said in a low tone: "My only books Were woman's looks, And folly 's all they 've taught me. The landlord raised his eyebrows, rounded his mouth, and darted out his tongue. The guest shifted the candle to his left hand, laid his right softly upon the host's arm, and murmured: "List! Are we alone? If I tell thee something, wilt thou tell it never?" The landlord smiled eagerly, shook his head, and bent toward his speaker. "Friend Perkins," said Mr. Tarbox, in muffled voice "So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams "Don't let the newspapers get hold of itgood-night." But it was only at daybreak that Mr. Tarbox disordered the drapery of his couch to make believe he had slept there, and at sunrise he was gone to find Claude. VII. 'THANASE'S VIOLIN. HAD Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to crush Claude out of her heart? No, A change of scene. Marguerite had treated the suggestion lightly, as something amusingly out of proportion to her trivial disorder, but took pains not to reject it. Zoséphine had received it with troubled assent, and mentioned the small sugar farm and orangery of the kinsman Robichaux, down on Bayou Terrebonne. But the physician said, "If that would not be too dull"; mentioned, casually, the city, and saw Marguerite lighten up eagerly. The city was chosen; the physician's sister, living there, would see Marguerite comfortably established. All was presently arranged. "And you can take your violin with you and study music," he said. Marguerite had one, and played it with a taste and skill that knew no competitor in all the surrounding region. It had belonged to her father. Before she was born, all Lafayette parish had known it tenderly. Before she could talk she had dancedcourtesied and turned, tiptoed and fallen and risen again, latter end first, to the gay strains he had loved to ring from it. Before it seemed safe, for the instrument, to trust it in her hands, she had learned to draw its bow; and for years, now, there had been no resident within the parish who could not have been her scholar better than to be her teacher. When Claude came she had shut the violin in its case, and left the poor thing hidden away, despising its powers to charm, lost in self-contempt, and helpless under the spell of a chaste passion's first enchantment. When he went she still forgot the instrument for many days. She returned with more than dutiful energy to her full part in the household cares, and gave every waking hour not so filled to fierce study. If she could not follow him, if a true maiden must wait upon faith, at least she would be ready if fate should ever bring him back. But one night, when she had conned her simple books until the words ran all together on the page, some good angel whispered, "The violin!" She took it and played. The noble house, with which, in fact, they had no music was but a song, but from some master of song. She played it, it may be, not after the best rules, yet as one may play who, after life's first great billow has gone over him, smites again his forgotten instrument. With tears, of all emotions mingled, starting from her eyes, and the bow trembling on the strings, she told the violin her love. And it answered her: connection. They took great pains to call themselves Creoles, though they knew well enough they were Acadians. The Acadian caterpillar often turns into a Creole butterfly. Their great-grandfather, one of the children of the Nova Scotian deportation, had been a tobacco farmer on the old Côte Acadian in St. John the Baptist parish. Lake des Allemands lay, there, just behind him. In 1815, his son, their grandfather, in an excursion through the lake and bayou beyond, discovered, far south-eastward in the midst of the Grande Prairie des Allemands, a "pointe" of several hundred acres extent. Here, with one or two others, he founded the Acadian settlement of "La Vacherie," and began to build a modest fortune. The blood was good, even though it was not the blood of ancient robbers; and the son in the next generation found his way, by natural and easy stages, through Barataria and into the city, and became the "merchant" of his many sugar and rice planting kinsmen and neighbors. So it and Marguerite were gone away to the great strange city together. The loneliness they left behind was a sad burden to Zoséphine. No other one thing had had so much influence to make so nearly vulnerable the defenses of her heart when Mr. Tarbox essayed to storm them. On the night following that event, the same that he had spent so sleeplessly in St. Martinville, she wrote a letter to Marguerite, which, though intended to have It was a great favor to Marguerite to be just the opposite effect, made the daughter taken into such a household as this. She felt feel that this being in New Orleans, and all it so. The household felt it so. Yet almost the matter connected with it, were one un- from the start they began to play her, in mixed mass of utter selfishness. The very their social world, as their best card-when written words that charged her to stay on they could. She had her hours of school and seemed to say, "Come home!"- Her strong of home study; also her music, both lessons little mother! always quiet and grave, it is true, and practice; was in earnest both as to books and sometimes sad; yet so well poised, so and violin, and had teachers who also were concentrated, so equal to every passing day in earnest; and so she found little time for and hour!- she to seem- in this letter- far social revels. Almost all sociability is revel in out of her course, adrift, and mutely and dimly New Orleans society, and especially in the signaling for aid! The daughter read the pages society she met. again and again. What could they mean? Here, for instance, this line about the mother's coming herself to the city, if, and if, and if! The letter found Marguerite in the bosom of a family that dwelt in the old rue Bourbon, only a short way below Canal street, the city's center. The house stands on the street, its drawing-room windows opening upon the sidewalk, and a narrow balcony on the story above shading them scantily at noon. A garden on the side is visible from the street through a lofty, black, wrought-iron fence. Of the details within the inclosure, I remember best the vines climbing the walls of the tall buildings that shut it in, and the urns and vases, and the evergreen foliage of the Japan plum-trees. A little way off, and across the street, was the pleasant restaurant and salesroom of the Christian Women's Exchange. The family spoke English. Indeed, they spoke it a great deal; and French-also a great deal. The younger generation, two daughters and a son, went much into society. Their name was that of an ancient French even more But when she did appear, somehow she shone. A native instinct in dressof it than her mother had at the same age and in manners and speech left only so little rusticity as became itself a charm rather than a blemish, suggested the sugar-cane fields; the orange grove; the plantation house with pillared porch, half-hidden in tall magnolias and laurestines and bushes of red and white camellias, higher and wider than arms can reach, and covered with their regal flowers from the ground to their tops; and the bayou front lined with moss-draped live-oaks, their noon-day shadows a hundred feet across. About her there was not the faintest hint of the country tavern. She was but in her seventeenth year; but on her native prairies, where girls are women at fourteen, seventeen was almost an advanced stage of decay. She seemed full nineteen, and a very well-equipped nineteen as social equipments went in the circle she had entered. Being a school-girl was no drawback; there are few New Orleans circles where it is; and especially not in her case, for |