CHAPTER X

There was no choice. Desmond had scant interest in this tumultuous sport of coursing deer with hounds, but he was fain to follow. He could not have retraced his way for his life, and to be lost in the wilderness—for every horseman had disappeared—was taking all the jeopardy of disaster and even of death. He congratulated himself that the excellent brute he bestrode seemed to know more about the matter than he. Suddenly Regnan, who had been for a few minutes lost to him, appeared in glimpses through the redundant vegetation about the lagoon, which could be characterized as neither water nor land, consisting now of one and now of the other, and again of a treacherous combination of both, that afforded neither footing nor the medium for swimming. The young sportsman was thrashing through brake and slough at a breakneck speed that presently carried him out of the reach of vision.

The glimpse was sufficient for the powerful red roan that Desmond rode, and he needed no prompting. He sprang instantly into the water in the essay to follow, swimming with great spirit, now and then stretching his legs to gain a firm footing, and, with a splashing flounder that nearly shook Desmond out of the saddle, striking out again to swim with alert vigilance and stalwart strength. Desmond was used to equestrian exercise in milder form and found a need for all the principles of equitation that he had been taught, for the most progressive of mounts can hardly act on his own initiative throughout the incidents of such a drive as this promised to be. Desmond gave the horse his head as to direction, but checked him according to his own judgment at impassable obstacles, and held him up firmly when he threatened to go to his knees. A little later, in a deep quagmire, where he showed signs of sinking, and, losing courage, began to snort in fright, Desmond used bit and heel to such effect as to reinstate his confidence and bring him leaping lightly out of his floundering instabilities to good dry ground.

When the wild, disordered turmoils of the alluvial wilderness gave way on the borders of a fine bit of water, Desmond was surprised himself to note how reassured he felt to perceive Regnan on his swimming horse nearly in the centre of the lakelet. In the swift transit he had scarcely had time to speculate if he were on the right track, but confirmation was welcome. Regnan had evidently felt a doubt, for he was looking over his shoulder; and as Desmond and the red roan galloped down to the margin, the horse sending forth a gleeful whinny at the sight of his swimming comrade in advance, Regnan waved his hand and pressed on to the opposite shore, where the dense shadows of a great stretch of forest gloomed. Here there was good going. Desmond pressed his horse to added speed to overhaul his precursor, and side by side they galloped at their utmost capacity, with scarcely a word exchanged, through miles of level woods, at last reaching the almost impenetrable densities of a cane-brake, skirting the growth rather than striking across it; this was the outpost of sluggish bayous and cypress sloughs, almost impassable, seeming impracticable, till suddenly they stood on a fair sheet of water. The blue sky looked down suavely upon it, and so serene it was that one might have thought the wild tangles through which the way hither had lain were some vision of a distraught imagination. All around the dense woods were silent, primeval. Something of the redundant swamp growths were about its margin and cloaked the approach to its placid waters, but beyond stretched the endless forests.

Regnan was dismounting. “It is too wide to swim with a horse,” he said. “I suppose that is the reason the deer take to it. And once get this body of water between them and the dogs, and the scent is lost.”

He was hitching his horse among the tangled growths at a little distance, where he would be invisible, and cautioned Desmond to follow his example.

“See that deer path?” he said. A narrow line threaded the luxuriant marshy grasses about the margin,—scarcely a path,—yet a keen eye might discern the imprint of a cleft hoof in the moist ground at the water’s edge. “I have shot deer here before,” added Regnan.

With the butt of his gun he beat down the boughs of evergreen shrubs to afford an elastic couch; and here they lay them down and rested and talked spasmodically and dully drowsed, while they awaited the sound of hound and horn.

“He’s giving them a good run for the money,” opined Regnan, as time wore on and brought no change. The placid lake gleamed serene; the dark forest gloomed. But for their own languid voices they heard naught, and sometimes long pauses intervened in the desultory talk.

“Fond of this sort of thing?” asked Regnan.

Desmond was more comfortable since he had taken off his high riding-boots and poured the water from them, being advised by Regnan to put them on immediately, lest they so stiffen in drying that their resumption would be impossible. The amusement did not seem so disagreeable to Desmond as he lay stretched out at his long length, his soft hat over his eyes, and his gloves also dutifully drying into shape on his hands. He was able to answer both veraciously and courteously.

“I am not used to it. I like the violent exercise well enough. But I don’t want to kill anything. I am glad I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Oh, I never shot at anything in my life but with a handful of bird-shot.”

Regnan, also recumbent, with his hat over his eyes to be rid of the combined glare of lake and sky, lifted himself suddenly to look about him.

“What a pity! We both have rifles! Kentopp ought to have given you a shotgun. I wish I had mine. I don’t know why I should have brought this thing.”

Then he lay back once more and shaded his eyes. A long silence ensued. The glare on the lake had dulled; a network of clouds gathered gradually, the meshes weaving continually until dense, dark, impervious to any gleam, it hung unbroken above the lake. The woods had fallen into deeper gloom; only the green of the saw-grass fringing the water-side seemed lifted into an intenser chromatic grade by the lowering of a gray sky. When a sound smote the mute quietude of the woods, it was a muttering of thunder.

“Rain! We are going to have it in plenty,” suggested Regnan.

“It has been demonstrated to-day that we are neither sugar nor salt.”

“But it will disperse the scent; the hounds will run counter.”

“Hallo!” exclaimed Desmond, in sudden excitement, lifting himself on his elbow. He could not have said why it should thrill him; but that sound of a horn, elastically leaping along the distance, so signally clear, so searchingly vibrant, so infinitely sweet, sought out every fibre of the romantic in him. Then rose the melody of the dogs in full cry, rhythmic, mellow, musical, softened by the distance, significant, unceasing, echoing with the sentiment of the sylvan chase of all the days of eld. It was not old Sloper’s “house-party” that Desmond heard, but every pack of high degree that ever coursed through the realms of poesy or the liberties of tradition. He was on his feet,—a light in his eyes, a flush on his cheek, his hands trembling, his muscles alert.

“They are coming this way! They are heading for the lake!” he exclaimed.

Regnan listened for a moment. “Right you are!” he cried.

As they took up their position at the stand, ambushed beside the deer path, Regnan insistently waived precedence.

“You fire first. _You_ are company! If you miss, I’ll fire. Buck ague?” he whispered.

The undulating sound of the cry of the hounds, emitted rhythmically with each bound, came ever nearer and nearer, and suddenly there was close at hand a crashing through the bushes down the deer path. Desmond threw up his rifle, conscious that he must catch the aim as quick as light. To his own surprise he was singularly cool and steady. A flash, the sharp report rang out; something clouded white and brown and gray leaped high into the air, issuing from the brush, and fell dead at the water’s edge,—a gigantic wildcat.

“A crack shot you are!” Regnan exclaimed, amazed. The ball had taken the creature just beneath the ear and pierced the brain. “And this cat is the finest ever!”

He bent over the magnificent specimen. “I didn’t know such a fellow as this was left in the country. But oh, how old Sloper will swear!”

“Why?” asked Desmond, the excitement cooling only gradually.

“His hounds are to run only deer and bear, no matter what’s the purpose of their creation and previous education. He lets them chase a fox, now and then, with a great palaver of explanation, and keeping right up with them. But a cat! He’ll be worth hearing!”

When the pack came presently, swiftly loping through the brake, and beheld their prey, it was difficult indeed to reduce them to order; and as old Sloper raged, and fumed, and indignantly rebuked them, their air suggested contradiction as they whisked about their prostrate foe, their gait as if they could not keep feet to ground—lifting them as if it were hot—in the flutter and excitement, and they noisily yelped with delight every time he spoke to them. It would seem that the subtle current of comprehension, the medium of communication, was broken. They so valiantly protested that they had done a fine thing, and piqued themselves so pridefully on their prowess, that he was fain to end the discussion in his own interest in the prey.

“Git out’n my way, or I’ll punch the nose off’n ye,” he roughly adjured them, as he dismounted to lay out at length the savage beast, in order to take its measure from its muzzle to the tip of the tail. “Thar! I’ve stepped on your foot, and I’m glad of it!” as a piercing squeak split the ears of the party. But the sufferer was game and hopped joyously about on three legs, participating in the event, despite his plaintive disabilities.

“What you goin’ to do with this here cat, Mr. Desmond?” he asked, an added respect for so fine a shot unmistakable in every line of his face and every inflection of his voice. “Better git it off the ground—the dogs mought tear it; they air so durned sassy over it, I can’t govern ’em none. And ’tis the finest thing I ever see. My! how handsome that fur is!”

“Why,” exclaimed Desmond, suddenly roused to the possibilities of his possession, “I’ll have it stuffed and present it to Mrs. Kentopp as an ornament to the armory and a memento of the occasion.” He had not eaten much of her bread, but he distrusted the motive of her hospitality, and his pride welcomed the opportunity to make a requital so promptly and in a guise which he knew would be so acceptable. He began to take an interest in the exceptional beauty of the specimen.

“Then it ought to be skun right now, before the critter stiffens. An’ I’ll do it fur ye and send the pelt to ye.”

Down old Sloper went on his hands and knees to the work _con amore_, his sharp hunting-knife gingerly tracing the lines where the cuticle and fur could be separated with least injury to the appearance of the integument. It was a long job and a careful one, but none of the other sportsmen had put in an appearance when it was finished. He straightened up and looked about him doubtfully.

“They all lost out somehows,” he said. “Mighty rough ridin’ in them slashes. I reckon they’ve all rid off to camp, mightily interested in that thar barbecued shoat fur dinner.”

The mention elicited a responsive interest and a desire to minimize the distance between the hunters and this dainty, time-honored of the _al fresco_ feast. The hounds, old Sloper, and the huntsman set out by way of the deer path, as they had come.

“I’ll try a short cut,” suggested Regnan, “if you don’t mind a bit more wading and swimming.”

Desmond protested his indifference to a renewal of their amphibious experience, and, mounting their horses, the two rode off through the saw-grass, which fringed the borders of the lake. Suddenly the slate-tinted clouds, darkening and still sinking lower, were cleft by a vivid forked flash; the thunder crashed with an appalling clangor; the horses were snorting in fright and plunging wildly, and the floodgates were unloosed. The rain descended in sheets; there was not a breath of wind, and the torrents fell vertically. It seemed for a time as if they were menaced by a cloud-burst. The quantity of water liberated was incalculable. The swamp which they now threaded was inundated so swiftly that Regnan more than once paused and looked back as if he canvassed the possibility of retracing their way to the solid earth they had quitted. But the rainfall was no translucent medium. He could distinguish naught beyond its opaque curtain. In serried lines in undiscriminated myriads the torrents fell, yet seemed always stationary. It hardly mattered which course they adopted, for each was soaked to the very bones. On and on they plodded, the horses dully drudging in the progress, making special exertion when they needs must, but obviously showing that they were of opinion the fun was at an end, and that there could be too much of a good thing. Like human beings, they found a vastly different animus in going forth full of expectation and coming back exhausted with the day’s run. They held down their heads in meek endurance as the rain beat upon them, and when they stumbled in the shifty, marshy soil, there was great danger both to the animal and his rider in the lack of that alertness of muscle to recover a footing or bound with his burdened saddle beyond the limits of the quagmire. Once or twice this recovery was so precarious, so clumsy a floundering, and sinking was so imminent, that both horsemen were alarmed and prescient of disaster.

“We have done this thing once too often, I am afraid,” said Regnan.

Desmond, too, had been looking over his shoulder, though not in the forlorn hope that they might be able to see the point from which they had started, for they had pressed the horses forward, against their will, with such energy that they had made it as impossible to retrace their way as to reach satisfactory footing in going on. Some injutting point of land in the irregular outline of the swamp, or one of the ridges of higher ground whereon switch cane grew luxuriantly, and which here and there traversed it, might yet afford them rescue, but if he could have discovered such opportunity in ordinary weather, the tumultuous, blinding downpour rendered it invisible now.

“There is nothing for it but to go on,” he said in a depressed cadence, for his heart had a sensation of sinking. He was growing desperate. The rain had in its midst great shifting clouds of thin vapor. Now it so inclosed them that they lost sight of each other. Yet when they called out in alarm, fearful of the disaster of unwittingly parting company, the changing mist gave a vision of the head of the other horse close at hand, though a moment earlier it could not be discerned.

Suddenly as Desmond shifted his position in the saddle, looking straight over his horse’s ears, he gave a start and an abrupt exclamation, staring as if he doubted his senses; for before him, in the pallid, hovering mists, half revealed and half concealed by the immaterial investitures of the curtaining rain and the cloaking cloud, like the travesty of a ship under full sail which tantalizes the desperate hope of wrecked or castaway mariners, he beheld as if suspended in the air between heaven and earth the outline of a river craft, a boat of some humble sort, a refuge.

“Look, Regnan, what is that in the sky?” he exclaimed hastily.

Regnan lifted his head and put up his hand to hold away the flapping brim of his drenched hat. His voice suddenly rang out with a thrill of good cheer: “In the sky? Why, it’s in the bayou, thank God!”

“It is a flatboat?” Desmond hesitated.

“A flatboat it is!”

Regnan’s face had not regained its florid tint; the chill of the fog and the rain, that had not left a dry thread on his body, and the effluvia of the swamp, penetrating his lungs, had turned his lips blue. But he laughed out gayly, although as his lineaments moved he swallowed the rills of rain that ran down his face. “It is rescue, my boy! That’s what it is! The boat is half a mile off, and we can just about make it.”

“Half a mile! A flatboat!” Even yet Desmond was hardly convinced that it was not a delusion. “What makes it so high!”

“What makes us so low!” laughed Regnan. “Because we are away down in the swamp, and the flatboat is away up in the bayou.”

“I should think the bayou would overflow and convert this swamp into a lake.”

“And so it would but for the conformation of its banks. And so it will if this cloud-burst keeps on a bit longer and swells the waters of the bayou.”

They shifted their direction and pushed on with a good heart, despite the difficulties that increased at every step; and though the horses, with their bent heads and drenched coats and drudging plod, had not seen the craft so high above their own level, now indeed obliterated from all view by the encircling cloud, they obviously felt the recruited hopes and energy of their riders. The revived spirits of the men were subtly imparted to the steeds, and the improved progress caused the distance to seem less than Regnan’s estimate when again the cloud lifted so much as to disclose the mirage-like craft, now lower on the limited horizon by reason of the nearer approach.

“To tell you the truth, Desmond,” said Regnan,—the two had become chummy, despite the tutor’s sensitive reserve and repellent dignity, for there was no justification in holding Regnan at arm’s length,—“I thought our hour had come. I thought we were destined to leave our bones in the bayou with the caitiff of the shirt of mail.”

Desmond shuddered. “Oh, give me better company!” he cried. “Death is a leveler, but it can never lay me so low as that.”

Now and then each looked up from beneath his sodden hat-brim to discern if their approach had been noticed from the craft, but as yet she gave no sign of observation. There was no one on deck, as they soon perceived. The rain beat down heavily upon it, and the water washed over its low gunwales as if it were the waves of the bayou. The stream, however, showed even yet no motion, no current; it was covered by a myriad of tiny bosses, so to speak, the rain being so persistent, the fall so regular, as to make the drops seem to stand stationary on its surface. It had risen several feet, as was evinced by the half submerged vegetation along the banks, the tips fresh and green, with no token of having been long under water. Beneath that black cloud, with the sinister effect of the white trunks of the cypress trees on either hand, deadened by repeated overflows, their weird reflections in the trembling black water, the funereal aspect of the pendent Spanish moss hanging from the high limbs and even festooning the trees from one side of the stream to the other,—the world, the past, life itself, annihilated by the clouds,—the dark and gloomy watercourse might have suggested the river Styx, and the shadowy, visionary, ill-defined boat the craft of Charon. They both felt an averse curiosity as they approached still nearer, striving to disintegrate from the rain and the cloud some individual characteristic or sign of occupation of the phantom craft. Regnan began to think it a derelict, an old abandoned hulk; but he soon saw that it sat the water much too jauntily, a stout, dry hull, tight and serviceable. Presently their keen young eyes discriminated a curl of smoke amidst the vapors that lay on the roof of the cabin. This was little more than a shed of upright boards, very flimsily put together, and a tiny square window along the eaves promised little for light. It served the purpose of a lookout, however. A pale face appeared there. It seemed to scan disconsolately the rain-lost world without, the encroaching cloud, the swamp with its sinking aspect; and suddenly, with transfixed attention, to become aware of the approaching sportsmen, the horse of the one up to the girth as he plodded through the half submerged morass, that of the other out of his depth and beginning to swim.

For one spectral moment the face stared as if confronted by doom. Then the door of the cabin opened, and disregarding the downpour, with skirts lashing about her, with long hair loose and flying, a tall, sinuous young woman appeared, sprang from the deck upon the marshy bank, cast loose the line about a tree, leaped back upon the deck in a moment, caught up a pole, and with a stalwart effort had pushed off an oar’s length or two before the man whom her shrill cries had summoned stumbled out of the cabin and stood staring at the newcomers, with little apparent inclination to lend a hand to the effort of clearing the harbor.

It was vain. The horsemen were too close upon them. Such motive power as kept the sluggish bayou on its course from the Mississippi River was too slight to aid the pole to evade the speed of a swimming horse. Desmond, indeed, had boarded the craft while the imbecile face of the boat-hand was still bent upon him.

“What do you mean by this behavior?” he demanded angrily, not as yet recognizing either the man or the woman. “Tie up the boat again, and show us your bar.”

“Jocelindy! Jocelindy! ye fool, ye!” cried the boat-hand, striking the struggling woman on the shoulder with his heavy hand. But for this repulsive brutality it might have been pathetic to hear him tax another with his own obvious infirmity. “Don’t ye see the gentleman’s goin’ ter spen’ money with us!”

He busied himself in tying up the boat in quick order, and found a place where the two horses could stand on pretty staunch ground under the interlacing boughs of cottonwood, so thick as to afford some shelter from the rain. He had fodder aboard, too, he said.

“Some fodder we had to pack a lot o’ chany,” interposed the woman, suddenly and shrilly, “becase there wasn’t no straw convenient.”

Desmond had no mind to linger on ceremony. Without waiting for an invitation, he turned toward the cabin door. The woman, still standing in the torrents, a secret thought in her face, her head askew, her draggled attire dripping with rain, her mouth bent down upon her clenched fist, suddenly asked:—

“Tell me one word,—is your name Faurie?”

“No,” said Desmond, frowning at the identification with his employers as if he were of no importance in himself; “my name is Desmond.”

“Thar now, Jocelindy, ye told Jed that very word,” exclaimed the boat-hand, mowing and laughing with imbecile and extravagant glee. “Ye told him that this very mornin’ before he set out with his spade.”

There was an incongruity in any mutual utilities between a boat and a spade, but Desmond was new to the river country and did not appreciate this fact. It struck Regnan at once, but he had no reason to place inimical construction upon the acts of the boat’s company, and it passed without comment.

Though what is called “not right bright,” Ethan Knoxton was discriminating enough to preside very acceptably at a bar when two storm-drenched wights stood before it, and he ranged the glasses with an extra polish and tipped a decanter. It was a dull, squalid little hole, with a permanent aroma of the greasy fumes of many breakfasts fried on the monkey stove at the farther end of the cabin, and the heavy, oily flavor of the untrimmed wick of a kerosene lamp swinging above the bar. The water dripped dismally from their coats and riding-breeches into the already well-filled legs of their high boots, that gave a squashing sound at every step. From their hats chilly little streams trickled into their collapsed shirt collars and down their shivering spines; and as the first drop of liquor touched their palates, the surprise to find that instead of rank, coarse whiskey it was good French brandy was so grateful that they could but look at each other with glistening eyes over the rims of their glasses as they drank.

The boat-hand watched them expectantly.

“My! Ain’t that fine!” Then as they set the glasses down, he whooped out his vicarious joy and smote his leg with the palm of his open hand.

Desmond had insisted on paying by right of his discovery of the bar, and he laid down the price of three drinks. “You will oblige me,” he said politely to the boat-hand, struggling with his distaste and disgust. One should not despise the poor, and the uncouth, and the deprived, who may have more value in their Maker’s eyes than one wots of. Therefore, because the semblance of humanity was not always disdained, he sought to have a regard to the mere image.

“For me?” The protuberant, grotesque eyes of the boat-hand were stretched. “For _me_!” He could hardly realize the rich opportunity. “For ME!” And at last convinced, he exclaimed, “Lord love ye! Lord bless ye! Lord save ye!” and gulped down the French brandy, casting up the gloating eyes of extreme ecstasy at every swallow. He smacked his lips again and again, to be heard in the remotest corner of the cabin, then stood comfortably smelling the glass while the others turned toward the stove.

“Isn’t that queer—French brandy?” Desmond suggested.

“Smuggled, I suppose,” said Regnan.

“Stolen, I’m afraid,” said Desmond, _sotto voce_, mopping the rain from his cold face and shaking the rills from his drenched hat. The jeopardy, the confusion, the exhaustion attendant on the moment of rescue from the sinister menace of the swamp and the cloud-burst engrossed his faculties, but he was vaguely recollecting that he had recently heard of the dispensing of this choice liquor among a class of swampers to whom its market price rendered it unaccustomed and unattainable.

“Well, I was not _particeps criminis_ till it was halfway down,—too far to catch it. And it feels just as good where it is as if it was honestly come by,” Regnan laughed.

The woman had utilized the interval while their backs were turned, and perhaps the shelter of a curtained bunk, to slip into a dry gown and a clean apron, and she, too, seemed to have determined on a change of tactics. She would fry for the gentlemen some rashers of bacon and eggs, if they liked; and set on a strong pot of coffee, she said.

“Are you afraid of spoiling your appetite for that barbecued shoat?” Regnan asked Desmond, with a rallying eye.

“No; are you?” For the day was wearing on into the afternoon. There were already dulling intimations in the clouds, as if the limits of light in their midst were curtailed. The woman listened intently as she set forth her poor and humble board with its best; and when they were seated on either side and she whisked about serving them, her strange, snake-like face had a more propitiatory and pleasing expression than seemed possible, with her high cheek-bones, her eyes aslant, her long, serpentine neck.

She suddenly addressed Desmond. “You see he ain’t quit suckin’ his thumb yit,” she said, as an infantine babbling caused Desmond to turn his head to perceive sitting bolt upright in a bunk behind him an infant in a red gown with his thumb in his mouth, regarding the feasting with slobbering admiration, but making no effort to partake and no demand to be served.

Desmond recognized her now for the first time. He had given her but little notice since coming aboard, and on the occasion of his previous visit to the shanty-boat, partly because of the dimness of the light in the little cabin, partly because of the sensational development of the interview, he had not sufficiently observed the subsidiary members of the crew—the woman, the child, and the boat-hand—to remember their faces. If Jedidiah Knoxton had been present, there would have been no delay in recalling the personnel of the whole party.

“That lady, Mrs. Faurie,” continued the woman, speaking in a very propitiatory manner, “told me how to break him of it, too. She’s powerful handsome, sure, ain’t she?”

“Yes,” said Desmond to this direct appeal. “And she is a very kind lady.”

“Sure! She told me she’d gin little Ikey some baby clothes.”

“But you left very suddenly,” said Desmond, significantly.

Regnan continued to eat silently, surprised at the evidence of previous acquaintance, but comfortable enough that it made no conversational demands upon him, so keen an appetite had the vicissitudes of the day given him.

“I want to tell you about that,” said the woman, winningly. “Jed’s a mighty techy kind o’ man an’ he got sorter nettled ’bout that thar wheel. He ’lowed you b’lieved it was stole. An’ truth was, he knowed he didn’t come by it right straight. A young boy nigh Ring-fence Plantation traded it to him fur mighty little money. His dad had give it to him fur Chris’mas, an’ the chile had got tired of it an’ had ruther have a few dollars. I begged Jed not to humor him; ’twas wuth mo’. But Jed said a plaything a boy is tired of ain’t wuth nothin’. ’Twas a good bargain fur him, an’ he gits a heap o’ trade ’mongst the young fry. But he oughtn’t ter helped the boy sell his wheel unbeknownst to his folks.”

Her serpentine aspect was not altogether unjustified. As she charmed so wisely, Desmond’s conviction was shaken. She laughed a little, as if embarrassed, passing the hem of her apron back and forth in her hand.

“Truth is, he was mad ’cause it carried out my warnings; an’ sorter skeered, too, ’cause he seen how it mought look to other folks. Jed’s real helterskelter. He pulled loose and drapped down the river, but he hadn’t gone a mile before he was sorry. That’s Jed.”

The boat-hand, listening, and now quite won to complaisance by the unusual prosperity that had befallen the “trading-boat,” here in its cache, echoed loudly, “That’s Jed!”

“So I didn’t git my duds the beautiful lady promised me.”

“Mrs. Faurie would no doubt send them to you if she knew where you would be,” said Desmond, mechanically meditating on his suspicions. The story was very glib. The shanty-boaters might have had no complicity with the tragedy at Whippoorwill Landing and no culpability as the receivers of stolen goods,—thus accessory after the fact. But the flavor of the French brandy still lingered about his palate; evidently they did not know its value as a beverage, and this was suspicious. Still, smuggling was comparatively a venial matter, and he had a vague regret that he had been so quick to direct the suspicion of the authorities upon so poor and defenseless a group. But he had had no word how the information had been received, or whether it was to be acted upon. Nevertheless, it would be easy to prove the truth of her story, provided her story was true.

“Just as well she is where she is to-day,” Regnan declared. He was leaning back in his chair, having finished his meal with a good relish, and feeling about in his cigar case to make sure that its contents had escaped without injury in the general flood. “Try one of these,”—he held it across the table to Desmond. “They seem to be all O. K.”

Desmond selected one, and, leaning over, struck a match on the lid of the stove. “The luckiest thing imaginable for us,” he said in jerks, as he held the light to the end and pulled hard to set it aglow, “that we happened to see the boat when we did.”

“Fires up all right?” Regnan queried. Then—“You must charge us a good round price for this dinner, madam. We are paying for not being at the bottom of the bayou,”—he laughed. “We have a special reason for not wanting to meet up with something we know is there.”

His face changed suddenly; he looked at her in consternation. Never had he seen such an expression as settled upon her countenance. Fear it was at first. “For God’s sake, what!” she gasped. Then—anger. “Ye’d better mind yer tongue, now!” Her fingers closed on the handle of a great butcher knife on the meat block in the corner. And now—venom. “Ye’re jes’ two cowardly, lying rapscallions! Ye dunno _what’s_ in the bayou! An’ ye ain’t got no call to know! An’ besides,”— with a realization of self-betrayal,—“thar ain’t nuthin’ thar fur ye to know—ha! ha! ha!—te, he, he!”

Regnan had risen, startled and wondering; but Desmond sat perfectly still, looking steadily at her, convinced that, added to the unstoried crimes and the unsavory detritus that the bayou hid under its black waters and its deep, unstable mire, lay the stolen wheel, and heaven knew what gear besides, from the looting of the store at Whippoorwill Landing by the merciless murderers.

It was a painful moment. He was glad to walk to the door of the cabin and look out once more at the steadily falling rain; at the spurious palpitation that the drops set up on the surface of the immobile stream; at the dark, encompassing forest, the water-side vegetation still in the pallid green of spring, seeming to hold all the light and color of the neutral-tinted landscape; at the slow circling of the vapors about the deck of the shanty-boat. There was a projection above the door like the shelter of eaves, and as he stood, only an occasional drop of water fell upon his head. He was all unprescient; he was conscious merely of distaste, the exhaustion from exertion, a sense of inexpressible boredom, the discomfort of his half-dried garb, and an impatient desire to be through with the whole episode. It met him like fate!—the muffled boom of a distant bell!