"For the summer," said the physician.

As, later, he walked toward that hotel, he went resolving to look up the Richlings again without delay. The banker's words rang in his ears like an overdose of quinine: "Watch the young man out of one corner of your eye. Make him swim. I don't say let him drown."

"Well, I do watch him," thought the Doctor. "I've only lost sight of him once in a while." But the thought seemed to find an echo against his conscience, and when it floated back it was: "I've only caught sight of him once in a while." The banker's words came up again: "Don't put the poor fellow into your debt and at your back." "Just what you've done," said conscience. "How do you know he isn't drowned?" He would see to it.

While he was still on his way to the hotel he fell in with an acquaintance, a Judge Somebody or other, lately from Washington City. He, also, lodged at the St. Charles. They went together. As they approached the majestic porch of the edifice they noticed some confusion at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the rotunda; cabmen and boys were running to a common point, where, in the midst of a small, compact crowd, two or three pairs of arms were being alternately thrown aloft and brought down. Presently the mass took a rapid movement up St. Charles street.

The judge gave his conjecture: "Some poor devil resisting arrest."

Before he and the Doctor parted for the night they went to the clerk's counter.

"No letters for you, Judge; mail failed. Here is a card for you, Doctor."

The Doctor received it. It had been furnished, blank, by the clerk to its writer.



At the door of his own room, with one hand on the unturned knob and one holding the card, the Doctor stopped and reflected. The card gave no indication of urgency. Did it? It was hard to tell. He didn't want to look foolish; morning would be time enough; he would go early next morning.

But at daybreak he was summoned post-haste to the bedside of a lady who had stayed all summer in New Orleans so as not to be out of this good doctor's reach at this juncture. She counted him a dear friend, and in similar trials had always required close and continual attention. It was the same now.

Dr. Sevier scrawled and sent to the Richlings a line, saying that, if either of them was sick, he would come at their call. When the messenger returned with word from Mrs. Riley that both of them were out, the Doctor's mind was much relieved. So a day and a night passed in which he did not close his eyes.

The next morning, as he stood in his office, hat in hand, and a finger pointing to a prescription on his desk, which he was directing Narcisse to give to some one who would call for it, there came a sudden hurried pounding of feminine feet on the stairs, a whiff of robes in the corridor, and Mary Richling rushed into his presence all tears and cries.

"O Doctor!—O Doctor! O God, my husband! my husband! O Doctor, my husband is in the Parish Prison!" She sank to the floor.

The Doctor raised her up. Narcisse hurried forward with his hands full of restoratives.

"Take away those things," said the Doctor, resentfully. "Here!—Mrs. Richling, take Narcisse's arm and go down and get into my carriage. I must write a short note, excusing myself from an appointment, and then I will join you."

Mary stood alone, turned, and passed out of the office beside the young Creole, but without taking his proffered arm. Did she suspect him of having something to do with this dreadful affair?

"Missez Witchlin," said he, as soon as they were out in the corridor, "I dunno if you goin' to billiv me, but I boun' to tell you that nodwithstanning that yo' 'uzban' is displease' with me, an' nodwithstanning 'e's in that calaboose, I h'always fine 'im a puffic gen'leman—that Mistoo Itchlin,—an' I'll sweah 'e is a gen'leman!"

She lifted her anguished eyes and looked into his beautiful face. Could she trust him? His little forehead was as hard as a goat's, but his eyes were brimming with tears, and his chin quivered. As they reached the head of the stairs he again offered his arm, and she took it, moaning softly, as they descended:—

"O John! O John! O my husband, my husband!"



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE TROUGH OF THE SEA.

Narcisse, on receiving his scolding from Richling, had gone to his home in Casa Calvo street, a much greater sufferer than he had appeared to be. While he was confronting his abaser there had been a momentary comfort in the contrast between Richling's ill-behavior and his own self-control. It had stayed his spirit and turned the edge of Richling's sharp denunciations. But, as he moved off the field, he found himself, at every step, more deeply wounded than even he had supposed. He began to suffocate with chagrin, and hurried his steps in sheer distress. He did not experience that dull, vacant acceptance of universal scorn which an unresentful coward feels. His pangs were all the more poignant because he knew his own courage.

In his home he went so straight up to the withered little old lady, in the dingiest of flimsy black, who was his aunt, and kissed her so passionately, that she asked at once what was the matter. He recounted the facts, shedding tears of mortification. Her feeling, by the time he had finished the account, was a more unmixed wrath than his, and, harmless as she was, and wrapped up in her dear, pretty nephew as she was, she yet demanded to know why such a man shouldn't be called out upon the field of honor.

"Ah!" cried Narcisse, shrinkingly. She had touched the core of the tumor. One gets a public tongue-lashing from a man concerning money borrowed; well, how is one going to challenge him without first handing back the borrowed money? It was a scalding thought! The rotten joists beneath the bare scrubbed-to-death floor quaked under Narcisse's to-and-fro stride.

"—And then, anyhow!"—he stopped and extended both hands, speaking, of course, in French,—"anyhow, he is the favored friend of Dr. Sevier. If I hurt him—I lose my situation! If he hurts me—I lose my situation!"

He dried his eyes. His aunt saw the insurmountability of the difficulty, and they drowned feeling in an affectionate glass of green-orangeade.

"But never mind!" Narcisse set his glass down and drew out his tobacco. He laughed spasmodically as he rolled his cigarette. "You shall see. The game is not finished yet."

Yet Richling passed the next day and night without assassination, and on the second morning afterward, as on the first, went out in quest of employment. He and Mary had eaten bread, and it had gone into their life without a remainder either in larder or purse. Richling was all aimless.

"I do wish I had the art of finding work," said he. He smiled. "I'll get it," he added, breaking their last crust in two. "I have the science already. Why, look you, Mary, the quiet, amiable, imperturbable, dignified, diurnal, inexorable haunting of men of influence will get you whatever you want."

"Well, why don't you do it, dear? Is there any harm in it? I don't see any harm in it. Why don't you do that very thing?"

"I'm telling you the truth," answered he, ignoring her question. "Nothing else short of overtowering merit will get you what you want half so surely."

"Well, why not do it? Why not?" A fresh, glad courage sparkled in the wife's eyes.

"Why, Mary," said John, "I never in my life tried so hard to do anything else as I've tried to do that! It sounds easy; but try it! You can't conceive how hard it is till you try it. I can't do it! I can't do it!"

"I'd do it!" cried Mary. Her face shone. "I'd do it! You'd see if I didn't! Why, John"—

"All right!" exclaimed he; "you sha'n't talk that way to me for nothing. I'll try it again! I'll begin to-day!"

"Good-by," he said. He reached an arm over one of her shoulders and around under the other and drew her up on tiptoe. She threw both hers about his neck. A long kiss—then a short one.

"John, something tells me we're near the end of our troubles."

John laughed grimly. "Ristofalo was to get back to the city to-day: maybe he's going to put us out of our misery. There are two ways for troubles to end." He walked away as he spoke. As he passed under the window in the alley, its sash was thrown up and Mary leaned out on her elbows.

"John!"

"Well?"

They looked into each other's eyes with the quiet pleasure of tried lovers, and were silent a moment. She leaned a little farther down, and said, softly:—

"You mustn't mind what I said just now."

"Why, what did you say?"

"That if it were I, I'd do it. I know you can do anything I can do, and a hundred better things besides."

He lifted his hand to her cheek. "We'll see," he whispered. She drew in, and he moved on.

Morning passed. Noon came. From horizon to horizon the sky was one unbroken blue. The sun spread its bright, hot rays down upon the town and far beyond, ripening the distant, countless fields of the great delta, which by and by were to empty their abundance into the city's lap for the employment, the nourishing, the clothing of thousands. But in the dusty streets, along the ill-kept fences and shadowless walls of the quiet districts, and on the glaring facades and heated pavements of the commercial quarters, it seemed only as though the slowly retreating summer struck with the fury of a wounded Amazon. Richling was soon dust-covered and weary. He had gone his round. There were not many men whom he could even propose to haunt. He had been to all of them. Dr. Sevier was not one. "Not to-day," said Richling.

"It all depends on the way it's done," he said to himself; "it needn't degrade a man if it's done the right way." It was only by such philosophy he had done it at all. Ristofalo he could have haunted without effort; but Ristofalo was not to be found. Richling tramped in vain. It may be that all plans were of equal merit just then. The summers of New Orleans in those times were, as to commerce, an utter torpor, and the autumn reawakening was very tardy. It was still too early for the stirrings of general mercantile life. The movement of the cotton crop was just beginning to be perceptible; but otherwise almost the only sounds were from the hammers of craftsmen making the town larger and preparing it for the activities of days to come.

The afternoon wore along. Not a cent yet to carry home! Men began to shut their idle shops and go to meet their wives and children about their comfortable dinner-tables. The sun dipped low. Hammers and saws were dropped into tool-boxes, and painters pulled themselves out of their overalls. The mechanic's rank, hot supper began to smoke on its bare board; but there was one board that was still altogether bare and to which no one hastened. Another day and another chance of life were gone.

Some men at a warehouse door, the only opening in the building left unclosed, were hurrying in a few bags of shelled corn. Night was falling. At an earlier hour Richling had offered the labor of his hands at this very door and had been rejected. Now, as they rolled in the last truck-load, they began to ask for rest with all the gladness he would have felt to be offered toil, singing,—

"To blow, to blow, some time for to blow."

They swung the great leaves of the door together as they finished their chorus, stood grouped outside a moment while the warehouseman turned the resounding lock, and then went away. Richling, who had moved on, watched them over his shoulder, and as they left turned back. He was about to do what he had never done before. He went back to the door where the bags of grain had stood. A drunken sailor came swinging along. He stood still and let him pass; there must be no witnesses. The sailor turned the next corner. Neither up nor down nor across the street, nor at dust-begrimed, cobwebbed window, was there any sound or motion. Richling dropped quickly on one knee and gathered hastily into his pocket a little pile of shelled corn that had leaked from one of the bags.

That was all. No harm to a living soul; no theft; no wrong; but ah! as he rose he felt a sudden inward lesion. Something broke. It was like a ship, in a dream, noiselessly striking a rock where no rock is. It seemed as though the very next thing was to begin going to pieces. He walked off in the dark shadow of the warehouse, half lifted from his feet by a vague, wide dismay. And yet he felt no greatness of emotion, but rather a painful want of it, as if he were here and emotion were yonder, down-street, or up-street, or around the corner. The ground seemed slipping from under him. He appeared to have all at once melted away to nothing. He stopped. He even turned to go back. He felt that if he should go and put that corn down where he had found it he should feel himself once more a living thing of substance and emotions. Then it occurred to him—no, he would keep it, he would take it to Mary; but himself—he would not touch it; and so he went home.

Mary parched the corn, ground it fine in the coffee-mill and salted and served it close beside the candle. "It's good white corn," she said, laughing. "Many a time when I was a child I used to eat this in my playhouse and thought it delicious. Didn't you? What! not going to eat?"

Richling had told her how he got the corn. Now he told his sensations. "You eat it, Mary," he said at the end; "you needn't feel so about it; but if I should eat it I should feel myself a vagabond. It may be foolish, but I wouldn't touch it for a hundred dollars." A hundred dollars had come to be his synonyme for infinity.

Mary gazed at him a moment tearfully, and rose, with the dish in her hand, saying, with a smile, "I'd look pretty, wouldn't I!"

She set it aside, and came and kissed his forehead. By and by she asked:—

"And so you saw no work, anywhere?"

"Oh, yes!" he replied, in a tone almost free from dejection. "I saw any amount of work—preparations for a big season. I think I certainly shall pick up something to-morrow—enough, anyhow, to buy something to eat with. If we can only hold out a little longer—just a little—I am sure there'll be plenty to do—for everybody." Then he began to show distress again. "I could have got work to-day if I had been a carpenter, or if I'd been a joiner, or a slater, or a bricklayer, or a plasterer, or a painter, or a hod-carrier. Didn't I try that, and was refused?"

"I'm glad of it," said Mary.

"'Show me your hands,' said the man to me. I showed them. 'You won't do,' said he."

"I'm glad of it!" said Mary, again.

"No," continued Richling; "or if I'd been a glazier, or a whitewasher, or a wood-sawyer, or"—he began to smile in a hard, unpleasant way,—"or if I'd been anything but an American gentleman. But I wasn't, and I didn't get the work!"

Mary sank into his lap, with her very best smile.

"John, if you hadn't been an American gentleman"—

"We should never have met," said John. "That's true; that's true." They looked at each other, rejoicing in mutual ownership.

"But," said John, "I needn't have been the typical American gentleman,—completely unfitted for prosperity and totally unequipped for adversity."

"That's not your fault," said Mary.

"No, not entirely; but it's your calamity, Mary. O Mary! I little thought"—

She put her hand quickly upon his mouth. His eye flashed and he frowned.

"Don't do so!" he exclaimed, putting the hand away; then blushed for shame, and kissed her.

They went to bed. Bread would have put them to sleep. But after a long time—

"John," said one voice in the darkness, "do you remember what Dr. Sevier told us?"

"Yes, he said we had no right to commit suicide by starvation."

"If you don't get work to-morrow, are you going to see him?"

"I am."

In the morning they rose early.

During these hard days Mary was now and then conscious of one feeling which she never expressed, and was always a little more ashamed of than probably she need have been, but which, stifle it as she would, kept recurring in moments of stress. Mrs. Riley—such was the thought—need not be quite so blind. It came to her as John once more took his good-by, the long kiss and the short one, and went breakfastless away. But was Mrs. Riley as blind as she seemed? She had vision enough to observe that the Richlings had bought no bread the day before, though she did overlook the fact that emptiness would set them astir before their usual hour of rising. She knocked at Mary's inner door. As it opened a quick glance showed the little table that occupied the centre of the room standing clean and idle.

"Why, Mrs. Riley!" cried Mary; for on one of Mrs. Riley's large hands there rested a blue-edged soup-plate, heaping full of the food that goes nearest to the Creole heart—jambolaya. There it was, steaming and smelling,—a delicious confusion of rice and red pepper, chicken legs, ham, and tomatoes. Mike, on her opposite arm, was struggling to lave his socks in it.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Riley, with a disappointed lift of the head, "ye're after eating breakfast already! And the plates all tleared off. Well, ye air smairt! I knowed Mr. Richlin's taste for jumbalie"—

Mary smote her hands together. "And he's just this instant gone! John! John! Why, he's hardly"— She vanished through the door, glided down the alley, leaned out the gate, looking this way and that, tripped down to this corner and looked—"Oh! oh!"—no John there—back and up to the other corner—"Oh! which way did John go?" There was none to answer.

Hours passed; the shadows shortened and shrunk under their objects, crawled around stealthily behind them as the sun swung through the south, and presently began to steal away eastward, long and slender. This was the day that Dr. Sevier dined out, as hereinbefore set forth.

The sun set. Carondelet street was deserted. You could hear your own footstep on its flags. In St. Charles street the drinking-saloons and gamblers' drawing-rooms, and the barber-shops, and the show-cases full of shirt-bosoms and walking-canes, were lighted up. The smell of lemons and mint grew finer than ever. Wide Canal street, out under the darkling crimson sky, was resplendent with countless many-colored lamps. From the river the air came softly, cool and sweet. The telescope man set up his skyward-pointing cylinder hard by the dark statue of Henry Clay; the confectioneries were ablaze and full of beautiful life, and every little while a great, empty cotton-dray or two went thundering homeward over the stony pavements until the earth shook, and speech for the moment was drowned. The St. Charles, such a glittering mass in winter nights, stood out high and dark under the summer stars, with no glow except just in its midst, in the rotunda; and even the rotunda was well-nigh deserted The clerk at his counter saw a young man enter the great door opposite, and quietly marked him as he drew near.

Let us not draw the stranger's portrait. If that were a pleasant task the clerk would not have watched him. What caught and kept that functionary's eye was that, whatever else might be revealed by the stranger's aspect,—weariness, sickness, hardship, pain,—the confession was written all over him, on his face, on his garb, from his hat's crown to his shoe's sole, Penniless! Penniless! Only when he had come quite up to the counter the clerk did not see him at all.

"Is Dr. Sevier in?"

"Gone out to dine," said the clerk, looking over the inquirer's head as if occupied with all the world's affairs except the subject in hand.

"Do you know when he will be back?"

"Ten o'clock."

The visitor repeated the hour murmurously and looked something dismayed. He tarried.

"Hem!—I will leave my card, if you please."

The clerk shoved a little box of cards toward him, from which a pencil dangled by a string. The penniless wrote his name and handed it in. Then he moved away, went down the tortuous granite stair, and waited in the obscurity of the dimly lighted porch below. The card was to meet the contingency of the Doctor's coming in by some other entrance. He would watch for him here.

By and by—he was very weary—he sat down on the stairs. But a porter, with a huge trunk on his back, told him very distinctly that he was in the way there, and he rose and stood aside. Soon he looked for another resting-place. He must get off of his feet somewhere, if only for a few moments. He moved back into the deep gloom of the stair-way shadow, and sank down upon the pavement. In a moment he was fast asleep.

He dreamed that he, too, was dining out. Laughter and merry-making were on every side. The dishes of steaming viands were grotesque in bulk. There were mountains of fruit and torrents of wine. Strange people of no identity spoke in senseless vaporings that passed for side-splitting wit, and friends whom he had not seen since childhood appeared in ludicrously altered forms and announced impossible events. Every one ate like a Cossack. One of the party, champing like a boar, pushed him angrily, and when he, eating like the rest, would have turned fiercely on the aggressor, he awoke.

A man standing over him struck him smartly with his foot.

"Get up out o' this! Get up! get up!"

The sleeper bounded to his feet. The man who had waked him grasped him by the lapel of his coat.

"What do you mean?" exclaimed the awakened man, throwing the other off violently.

"I'll show you!" replied the other, returning with a rush; but he was thrown off again, this time with a blow of the fist.

"You scoundrel!" cried the penniless man, in a rage; "if you touch me again I'll kill you!"

They leaped together. The one who had proposed to show what he meant was knocked flat upon the stones. The crowd that had run into the porch made room for him to fall. A leather helmet rolled from his head, and the silver crescent of the police flashed on his breast. The police were not uniformed in those days.

But he is up in an instant and his adversary is down—backward, on his elbows. Then the penniless man is up again; they close and struggle, the night-watchman's club falls across his enemy's head blow upon blow, while the sufferer grasps him desperately, with both hands, by the throat. They tug, they snuffle, they reel to and fro in the yielding crowd; the blows grow fainter, fainter; the grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, unmolested, well-dressed crime, moves a sight so exhilarating that a score of street lads follow behind and a dozen trip along in front with frequent backward glances: two officers of justice walking in grim silence abreast, and between them a limp, torn, hatless, bloody figure, partly walking, partly lifted, partly dragged, past the theatres, past the lawyers' rookeries of Commercial place, the tenpin alleys, the chop-houses, the bunko shows, and shooting-galleries, on, across Poydras street into the dim openness beyond, where glimmer the lamps of Lafayette square and the white marble of the municipal hall, and just on the farther side of this, with a sudden wheel to the right into Hevia street, a few strides there, a turn to the left, stumbling across a stone step and wooden sill into a narrow, lighted hall, and turning and entering an apartment here again at the right. The door is shut; the name is written down; the charge is made: Vagrancy, assaulting an officer, resisting arrest. An inner door is opened.

"What have you got in number nine?" asks the captain in charge.

"Chuck full," replies the turnkey.

"Well, number seven?" These were the numbers of cells.

"The rats'll eat him up in number seven."

"How about number ten?"

"Two drunk-and-disorderlies, one petty larceny, and one embezzlement and breach of trust."

"Put him in there."

* * *

And this explains what the watchman in Marais street could not understand,—why Mary Richling's window shone all night long.



CHAPTER XXVII.

OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN.

Round goes the wheel forever. Another sun rose up, not a moment hurried or belated by the myriads of life-and-death issues that cover the earth and wait in ecstasies of hope or dread the passage of time. Punctually at ten Justice-in-the-rough takes its seat in the Recorder's Court, and a moment of silent preparation at the desks follows the loud announcement that its session has begun. The perky clerks and smirking pettifoggers move apart on tiptoe, those to their respective stations, these to their privileged seats facing the high dais. The lounging police slip down from their reclining attitudes on the heel-scraped and whittled window-sills. The hum of voices among the forlorn humanity that half fills the gradually rising, greasy benches behind, allotted to witnesses and prisoners' friends, is hushed. In a little square, railed space, here at the left, the reporters tip their chairs against the hair-greased wall, and sharpen their pencils. A few tardy visitors, familiar with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who, under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the peering, bloated faces of the night's prisoners.

The recorder utters a name. The clerk down in front of him calls it aloud. A door in the palings opens, and one of the captives comes forth and stands before the rail. The arresting officer mounts to the witness-stand and confronts him. The oath is rattled and turned out like dice from a box, and the accusing testimony is heard. It may be that counsel rises and cross-examines, if there are witnesses for the defence. Strange and far-fetched questions, from beginners at the law or from old blunderers, provoke now laughter, and now the peremptory protestations of the court against the waste of time. Yet, in general, a few minutes suffices for the whole trial of a case.

"You are sure she picked the handsaw up by the handle, are you?" says the questioner, frowning with the importance of the point.

"Yes."

"And that she coughed as she did so?"

"Well, you see, she kind o'"—

"Yes, or no!"

"No."

"That's all." He waves the prisoner down with an air of mighty triumph, turns to the recorder, "trusts it is not necessary to," etc., and the accused passes this way or that, according to the fate decreed,—discharged, sentenced to fine and imprisonment, or committed for trial before the courts of the State.

"Order in court!" There is too much talking. Another comes and stands before the rail, and goes his way. Another, and another; now a ragged boy, now a half-sobered crone, now a battered ruffian, and now a painted girl of the street, and at length one who starts when his name is called, as though something had exploded.

"John Richling!"

He came.

"Stand there!"

Some one is in the witness-stand, speaking. The prisoner partly hears, but does not see. He stands and holds the rail, with his eyes fixed vacantly on the clerk, who bends over his desk under the seat of justice, writing. The lawyers notice him. His dress has been laboriously genteel, but is torn and soiled. A detective, with small eyes set close together, and a nose like a yacht's rudder, whisperingly calls the notice of one of these spectators who can see the prisoner's face to the fact that, for all its thinness and bruises, it is not a bad one. All can see that the man's hair is fine and waving where it is not matted with blood.

The testifying officer had moved as if to leave the witness-stand, when the recorder restrained him by a gesture, and, leaning forward and looking down upon the prisoner, asked:—

"Have you anything to say to this?"

The prisoner lifted his eyes, bowed affirmatively, and spoke in a low, timid tone. "May I say a few words to you privately?"

"No."

He dropped his eyes, fumbled with the rail, and, looking up suddenly, said in a stronger voice, "I want somebody to go to my wife—in Prieur street. She is starving. This is the third day"—

"We're not talking about that," said the recorder. "Have you anything to say against this witness's statement?"

The prisoner looked upon the floor and slowly shook his head. "I never meant to break the law. I never expected to stand here. It's like an awful dream. Yesterday, at this time, I had no more idea of this—I didn't think I was so near it. It's like getting caught in machinery." He looked up at the recorder again. "I'm so confused"—he frowned and drew his hand slowly across his brow—"I can hardly—put my words together. I was hunting for work. There is no man in this city who wants to earn an honest living more than I do."

"What's your trade?"

"I have none."

"I supposed not. But you profess to have some occupation, I dare say. What's your occupation?"

"Accountant."

"Hum! you're all accountants. How long have you been out of employment?"

"Six months."

"Why did you go to sleep under those steps?"

"I didn't intend to go to sleep. I was waiting for a friend to come in who boards at the St. Charles."

A sudden laugh ran through the room. "Silence in court!" cried a deputy.

"Who is your friend?" asked the recorder.

The prisoner was silent.

"What is your friend's name?"

Still the prisoner did not reply. One of the group of pettifoggers sitting behind him leaned forward, touched him on the shoulder, and murmured: "You'd better tell his name. It won't hurt him, and it may help you." The prisoner looked back at the man and shook his head.

"Did you strike this officer?" asked the recorder, touching the witness, who was resting on both elbows in the light arm-chair on the right.

The prisoner made a low response.

"I don't hear you," said the recorder.

"I struck him," replied the prisoner; "I knocked him down." The court officers below the dais smiled. "I woke and found him spurning me with his foot, and I resented it. I never expected to be a law-breaker. I"— He pressed his temples between his hands and was silent. The men of the law at his back exchanged glances of approval. The case was, to some extent, interesting.

"May it please the court," said the man who had before addressed the prisoner over his shoulder, stepping out on the right and speaking very softly and graciously, "I ask that this man be discharged. His fault seems so much more to be accident than intention, and his suffering so much more than his fault"—

The recorder interrupted by a wave of the hand and a preconceived smile: "Why, according to the evidence, the prisoner was noisy and troublesome in his cell all night."

"O sir," exclaimed the prisoner, "I was thrown in with thieves and drunkards! It was unbearable in that hole. We were right on the damp and slimy bricks. The smell was dreadful. A woman in the cell opposite screamed the whole night. One of the men in the cell tried to take my coat from me, and I beat him!"

"It seems to me, your honor," said the volunteer advocate, "the prisoner is still more sinned against than sinning. This is evidently his first offence, and"—

"Do you know even that?" asked the recorder.

"I do not believe his name can be found on any criminal record. I"—

The recorder interrupted once more. He leaned toward the prisoner.

"Did you ever go by any other name?"

The prisoner was dumb.

"Isn't John Richling the only name you have ever gone by?" said his new friend: but the prisoner silently blushed to the roots of his hair and remained motionless.

"I think I shall have to send you to prison," said the recorder, preparing to write. A low groan was the prisoner's only response.

"May it please your honor," began the lawyer, taking a step forward; but the recorder waved his pen impatiently.

"Why, the more is said the worse his case gets; he's guilty of the offence charged, by his own confession."

"I am guilty and not guilty," said the prisoner slowly. "I never intended to be a criminal. I intended to be a good and useful member of society; but I've somehow got under its wheels. I've missed the whole secret of living." He dropped his face into his hands. "O Mary, Mary! why are you my wife?" He beckoned to his counsel. "Come here; come here." His manner was wild and nervous. "I want you—I want you to go to Prieur street, to my wife. You know—you know the place, don't you? Prieur street. Ask for Mrs. Riley"—

"Richling," said the lawyer.

"No, no! you ask for Mrs. Riley? Ask her—ask her—oh! where are my senses gone? Ask"—

"May it please the court," said the lawyer, turning once more to the magistrate and drawing a limp handkerchief from the skirt of his dingy alpaca, with a reviving confidence, "I ask that the accused be discharged; he's evidently insane."

The prisoner looked rapidly from counsel to magistrate, and back again, saying, in a low voice, "Oh, no! not that! Oh, no! not that! not that!"

The recorder dropped his eyes upon a paper on the desk before him, and, beginning to write, said without looking up:—

"Parish Prison—to be examined for insanity."

A cry of remonstrance broke so sharply from the prisoner that even the reporters in their corner checked their energetic streams of lead-pencil rhetoric and looked up.

"You cannot do that!" he exclaimed. "I am not insane! I'm not even confused now! It was only for a minute! I'm not even confused!"

An officer of the court laid his hand quickly and sternly upon his arm; but the recorder leaned forward and motioned him off. The prisoner darted a single flash of anger at the officer, and then met the eye of the justice.

"If I am a vagrant commit me for vagrancy! I expect no mercy here! I expect no justice! You punish me first, and try me afterward, and now you can punish me again; but you can't do that!"

"Order in court! Sit down in those benches!" cried the deputies. The lawyers nodded darkly or blandly, each to each. The one who had volunteered his counsel wiped his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder's lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner:—

"You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also."

The prisoner's eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted:—

"I have no object in concealing either."

The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen:—

"Parish Prison, for thirty days."

The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a word or note of distress.

Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the facetious name of the "Black Maria" received the convicted ones from the same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted with zest the abundant number of passengers that were ushered into it one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both sexes; tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury! Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the passive, the violent, all kinds; filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room; crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by throwing his weight against it.

"Officer," said one, whose volunteer counsel had persuaded the reporters not to mention him by name in their thrilling account,—"officer," said this one, trying to pause an instant before the door of the vehicle, "is there no other possible way to"—

"Get in! get in!"

Two hands spread against his back did the rest; the door clapped to like the lid of a bursting trunk, the padlock rattled: away they went!



CHAPTER XXVIII.

"OH, WHERE IS MY LOVE?"

At the prison the scene is repeated in reverse, and the Black Maria presently rumbles away empty. In that building, whose exterior Narcisse found so picturesque, the vagrant at length finds food. In that question of food, by the way, another question arose, not as to any degree of criminality past or present, nor as to age, or sex, or race, or station; but as to the having or lacking fifty cents. "Four bits" a day was the open sesame to a department where one could have bedstead and ragged bedding and dirty mosquito-bar, a cell whose window looked down into the front street, food in variety, and a seat at table with the officers of the prison. But those who could not pay were conducted past all these delights, along one of several dark galleries, the turnkeys of which were themselves convicts, who, by a process of reasoning best understood among the harvesters of perquisites, were assumed to be undergoing sentence.

The vagrant stood at length before a grated iron gate while its bolts were thrown back and it growled on its hinges. What he saw within needs no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large, flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags,—some gaunt and feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed,—the sentenced, the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than out,—burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters, wharf-rats, common "drunks," pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of bread, garroters, murderers,—in common equality and fraternity. In this resting and refreshing place for vice, this caucus for the projection of future crime, this ghastly burlesque of justice and the protection of society, there was a man who had been convicted of a dreadful murder a year or two before, and sentenced to twenty-one years' labor in the State penitentiary. He had got his sentence commuted to confinement in this prison for twenty-one years of idleness. The captain of the prison had made him "captain of the yard." Strength, ferocity, and a terrific record were the qualifications for this honorary office.

The gate opened. A howl of welcome came from those within, and the new batch, the vagrant among them, entered the yard. He passed, in his turn, to a tank of muddy water in this yard, washed away the soil and blood of the night, and so to the cell assigned him. He was lying face downward on its pavement, when a man with a cudgel ordered him to rise. The vagrant sprang to his feet and confronted the captain of the yard, a giant in breadth and stature, with no clothing but a ragged undershirt and pantaloons.

"Get a bucket and rag and scrub out this cell!"

He flourished his cudgel. The vagrant cast a quick glance at him, and answered quietly, but with burning face:—

"I'll die first."

A blow with the cudgel, a cry of rage, a clash together, a push, a sledge-hammer fist in the side, another on the head, a fall out into the yard, and the vagrant lay senseless on the flags.

When he opened his eyes again, and struggled to his feet, a gentle grasp was on his arm. Somebody was steadying him. He turned his eyes. Ah! who is this? A short, heavy, close-shaven man, with a woollen jacket thrown over one shoulder and its sleeves tied together in a knot under the other. He speaks in a low, kind tone:—

"Steady, Mr. Richling!"

Richling supported himself by a hand on the man's arm, gazed in bewilderment at the gentle eyes that met his, and with a slow gesture of astonishment murmured, "Ristofalo!" and dropped his head.

The Italian had just entered the prison from another station-house. With his hand still on Richling's shoulder, and Richling's on his, he caught the eye of the captain of the yard, who was striding quietly up and down near by, and gave him a nod to indicate that he would soon adjust everything to that autocrat's satisfaction. Richling, dazed and trembling, kept his eyes still on the ground, while Ristofalo moved with him slowly away from the squalid group that gazed after them. They went toward the Italian's cell.

"Why are you in prison?" asked the vagrant, feebly.

"Oh, nothin' much—witness in shootin' scrape—talk 'bout aft' while."

"O Ristofalo," groaned Richling, as they entered, "my wife! my wife! Send some bread to my wife!"

"Lie down," said the Italian, pressing softly on his shoulders; but Richling as quietly resisted.

"She is near here, Ristofalo. You can send with the greatest ease! You can do anything, Ristofalo,—if you only choose!"

"Lay down," said the Italian again, and pressed more heavily. The vagrant sank limply to the pavement, his companion quickly untying the jacket sleeves from under his own arms and wadding the garment under Richling's head.

"Do you know what I'm in here for, Ristofalo?" moaned Richling.

"Don't know, don't care. Yo' wife know you here?" Richling shook his head on the jacket. The Italian asked her address, and Richling gave it.

"Goin' tell her come and see you," said the Italian. "Now, you lay still little while; I be back t'rectly." He went out into the yard again, pushing the heavy door after him till it stood only slightly ajar, sauntered easily around till he caught sight of the captain of the yard, and was presently standing before him in the same immovable way in which he had stood before Richling in Tchoupitoulas street, on the day he had borrowed the dollar. Those who idly drew around could not hear his words, but the "captain's" answers were intentionally audible. He shook his head in rejection of a proposal. "No, nobody but the prisoner himself should scrub out the cell. No, the Italian should not do it for him. The prisoner's refusal and resistance had settled that question. No, the knocking down had not balanced accounts at all. There was more scrubbing to be done. It was scrubbing day. Others might scrub the yard and the galleries, but he should scrub out the tank. And there were other things, and worse,—menial services of the lowest kind. He should do them when the time came, and the Italian would have to help him too. Never mind about the law or the terms of his sentence. Those counted for nothing there." Such was the sense of the decrees; the words were such as may be guessed or left unguessed. The scrubbing of the cell must commence at once. The vagrant must make up his mind to suffer. "He had served on jury!" said the man in the undershirt, with a final flourish of his stick. "He's got to pay dear for it."

When Ristofalo returned to his cell, its inmate, after many upstartings from terrible dreams, that seemed to guard the threshold of slumber, had fallen asleep. The Italian touched him gently, but he roused with a wild start and stare.

"Ristofalo," he said, and fell a-staring again.

"You had some sleep," said the Italian.

"It's worse than being awake," said Richling. He passed his hands across his face. "Has my wife been here?"

"No. Haven't sent yet. Must watch good chance. Git captain yard in good-humor first, or else do on sly." The cunning Italian saw that anything looking like early extrication would bring new fury upon Richling. He knew all the values of time. "Come," he added, "must scrub out cell now." He ignored the heat that kindled in Richling's eyes, and added, smiling, "You don't do it, I got to do it."

With a little more of the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of the yard; but his companion helped him up, and they both agreed it was the sliminess of the tank's bottom that was to blame.

"Soon we get through we goin' to buy drink o' whisky from jailer," said Ristofalo; "he keep it for sale. Then, after that, kin hire somebody to go to your house; captain yard think we gittin' mo' whisky."

"Hire?" said Richling. "I haven't a cent in the world."

"I got a little—few dimes," rejoined the other.

"Then why are you here? Why are you in this part of the prison?"

"Oh, 'fraid to spend it. On'y got few dimes. Broke ag'in."

Richling stopped still with astonishment, brickbat in hand. The Italian met his gaze with an illuminated smile. "Yes," he said, "took all I had with me to bayou La Fourche. Coming back, slept with some men in boat. One git up in night-time and steal everything. Then was a big fight. Think that what fight was about—about dividing the money. Don't know sure. One man git killed. Rest run into the swamp and prairie. Officer arrest me for witness. Couldn't trust me to stay in the city."

"Do you think the one who was killed was the thief?"

"Don't know sure," said the Italian, with the same sweet face, and falling to again with his brickbat,—"hope so!"

"Strange place to confine a witness!" said Richling, holding his hand to his bruised side and slowly straightening his back.

"Oh, yes, good place," replied the other, scrubbing away; "git him, in short time, so he swear to anything."

It was far on in the afternoon before the wary Ristofalo ventured to offer all he had in his pocket to a hanger-on of the prison office, to go first to Richling's house, and then to an acquaintance of his own, with messages looking to the procuring of their release. The messenger chose to go first to Ristofalo's friend, and afterward to Mrs. Riley's. It was growing dark when he reached the latter place. Mary was out in the city somewhere, wandering about, aimless and distracted, in search of Richling. The messenger left word with Mrs. Riley. Richling had all along hoped that that good friend, doubtless acquainted with the most approved methods of finding a missing man, would direct Mary to the police station at the earliest practicable hour. But time had shown that she had not done so. No, indeed! Mrs. Riley counted herself too benevolently shrewd for that. While she had made Mary's suspense of the night less frightful than it might have been, by surmises that Mr. Richling had found some form of night-work,—watching some pile of freight or some unfinished building,—she had come, secretly, to a different conviction, predicated on her own married experiences; and if Mr. Richling had, in a moment of gloom, tipped the bowl a little too high, as her dear lost husband, the best man that ever walked, had often done, and had been locked up at night to be let out in the morning, why, give him a chance! Let him invent his own little fault-hiding romance and come home with it. Mary was frantic. She could not be kept in; but Mrs. Riley, by prolonged effort, convinced her it was best not to call upon Dr. Sevier until she could be sure some disaster had actually occurred, and sent her among the fruiterers and oystermen in vain search for Raphael Ristofalo. Thus it was that the Doctor's morning messenger to the Richlings, bearing word that if any one were sick he would call without delay, was met by Mrs. Riley only, and by the reassuring statement that both of them were out. The later messenger, from the two men in prison, brought back word of Mary's absence from the house, of her physical welfare, and Mrs. Riley's promise that Mary should visit the prison at the earliest hour possible. This would not be till the next morning.

While Mrs. Riley was sending this message, Mary, a great distance away, was emerging from the darkening and silent streets of the river front and moving with timid haste across the broad levee toward the edge of the water at the steam-boat landing. In this season of depleted streams and idle waiting, only an occasional boat lifted its lofty, black, double funnels against the sky here and there, leaving wide stretches of unoccupied wharf-front between. Mary hurried on, clear out to the great wharf's edge, and looked forth upon the broad, softly moving harbor. The low waters spread out and away, to and around the opposite point, in wide surfaces of glassy purples and wrinkled bronze. Beauty, that joy forever, is sometimes a terror. Was the end of her search somewhere underneath that fearful glory? She clasped her hands, bent down with dry, staring eyes, then turned again and fled homeward. She swerved once toward Dr. Sevier's quarters, but soon decided to see first if there were any tidings with Mrs. Riley, and so resumed her course. Night overtook her in streets where every footstep before or behind her made her tremble; but at length she crossed the threshold of Mrs. Riley's little parlor. Mrs. Riley was standing in the door, and retreated a step or two backward as Mary entered with a look of wild inquiry.

"Not come?" cried the wife.

"Mrs. Richlin'," said the widow, hurriedly, "yer husband's alive and found."

Mary seized her frantically by the shoulders, crying with high-pitched voice:—

"Where is he?—where is he?"

"Ya can't see um till marning, Mrs. Richlin'."

"Where is he?" cried Mary, louder than before.

"Me dear," said Mrs. Riley, "ye kin easy git him out in the marning."

"Mrs. Riley," said Mary, holding her with her eye, "is my husband in prison?—O Lord God! O God! my God!"

Mrs. Riley wept. She clasped the moaning, sobbing wife to her bosom, and with streaming eyes said:—

"Mrs. Richlin', me dear, Mrs. Richlin', me dear, what wad I give to have my husband this night where your husband is!"



CHAPTER XXIX.

RELEASE.—NARCISSE.

As some children were playing in the street before the Parish Prison next morning, they suddenly started and scampered toward the prison's black entrance. A physician's carriage had driven briskly up to it, ground its wheels against the curb-stone, and halted. If any fresh crumbs of horror were about to be dropped, the children must be there to feast on them. Dr. Sevier stepped out, gave Mary his hand and then his arm, and went in with her. A question or two in the prison office, a reference to the rolls, and a turnkey led the way through a dark gallery lighted with dimly burning gas. The stench was suffocating. They stopped at the inner gate.

"Why didn't you bring him to us?" asked the Doctor, scowling resentfully at the facetious drawings and legends on the walls, where the dampness glistened in the sickly light.

The keeper made a low reply as he shot the bolts.

"What?" quickly asked Mary.

"He's not well," said Dr. Sevier.

The gate swung open. They stepped into the yard and across it. The prisoners paused in a game of ball. Others, who were playing cards, merely glanced up and went on. The jailer pointed with his bunch of keys to a cell before him. Mary glided away from the Doctor and darted in. There was a cry and a wail.

The Doctor followed quickly. Ristofalo passed out as he entered. Richling lay on a rough gray blanket spread on the pavement with the Italian's jacket under his head. Mary had thrown herself down beside him upon her knees, and their arms were around each other's neck.

"Let me see, Mrs. Richling," said the physician, touching her on the shoulder. She drew back. Richling lifted a hand in welcome. The Doctor pressed it.

"Mrs. Richling," he said, as they faced each other, he on one knee, she on both. He gave her a few laconic directions for the sick man's better comfort. "You must stay here, madam," he said at length; "this man Ristofalo will be ample protection for you; and I will go at once and get your husband's discharge." He went out.

In the office he asked for a seat at a desk. As he finished using it he turned to the keeper and asked, with severe face:—

"What do you do with sick prisoners here, anyway?"

The keeper smiled.

"Why, if they gits right sick, the hospital wagon comes and takes 'em to the Charity Hospital."

"Umhum!" replied the Doctor, unpleasantly,—"in the same wagon they use for a case of scarlet fever or small-pox, eh?"

The keeper, with a little resentment in his laugh, stated that he would be eternally lost if he knew.

"I know," remarked the Doctor. "But when a man is only a little sick,—according to your judgment,—like that one in there now, he is treated here, eh?"

The keeper swelled with a little official pride. His tone was boastful.

"We has a complete dispenisary in the prison," he said.

"Yes? Who's your druggist?" Dr. Sevier was in his worst inquisitorial mood.

"One of the prisoners," said the keeper.

The Doctor looked at him steadily. The man, in the blackness of his ignorance, was visibly proud of this bit of economy and convenience.

"How long has he held this position?" asked the physician.

"Oh, a right smart while. He was sentenced for murder, but he's waiting for a new trial."

"And he has full charge of all the drugs?" asked the Doctor, with a cheerful smile.

"Yes, sir." The keeper was flattered.

"Poisons and all, I suppose, eh?" pursued the Doctor.

"Everything."

The Doctor looked steadily and silently upon the officer, and tore and folded and tore again into small bits the prescription he had written. A moment later the door of his carriage shut with a smart clap and its wheels rattled away. There was a general laugh in the office, heavily spiced with maledictions.

"I say, Cap', what d'you reckon he'd 'a' said if he'd 'a' seen the women's department?"

* * *

In those days recorders had the power to release prisoners sentenced by them when in their judgment new information justified such action. Yet Dr. Sevier had a hard day's work to procure Richling's liberty. The sun was declining once more when a hack drove up to Mrs. Riley's door with John and Mary in it, and Mrs. Riley was restrained from laughing and crying only by the presence of the great Dr. Sevier and a romantic Italian stranger by the captivating name of Ristofalo. Richling, with repeated avowals of his ability to walk alone, was helped into the house between these two illustrious visitors, Mary hurrying in ahead, and Mrs. Riley shutting the street door with some resentment of manner toward the staring children who gathered without. Was there anything surprising in the fact that eminent persons should call at her house?

When there was time for greetings she gave her hand to Dr. Sevier and asked him how he found himself. To Ristofalo she bowed majestically. She noticed that he was handsome and muscular.

At different hours the next day the same two visitors called. Also the second day after. And the third. And frequently afterward.

* * *

Ristofalo regained his financial feet almost, as one might say, at a single hand-spring. He amused Mary and John and Mrs. Riley almost beyond limit with his simple story of how he did it.

"Ye'd better hurry and be getting up out o' that sick bed, Mr. Richlin'," said the widow, in Ristofalo's absence, "or that I-talian rascal'll be making himself entirely too agree'ble to yer lady here. Ha! ha! It's she that he's a-comin' here to see."

Mrs. Riley laughed again, and pointed at Mary and tossed her head, not knowing that Mary went through it all over again as soon as Mrs. Riley was out of the room, to the immense delight of John.

"And now, madam," said Dr. Sevier to Mary, by and by, "let it be understood once more that even independence may be carried to a vicious extreme, and that"—he turned to Richling, by whose bed he stood—"you and your wife will not do it again. You've had a narrow escape. Is it understood?"

"We'll try to be moderate," replied the invalid, playfully.

"I don't believe you," said the Doctor.

And his scepticism was wise. He continued to watch them, and at length enjoyed the sight of John up and out again with color in his cheeks and the old courage—nay, a new and a better courage—in his eyes.

Said the Doctor on his last visit, "Take good care of your husband, my child." He held the little wife's hand a moment, and gazed out of Mrs. Riley's front door upon the western sky. Then he transferred his gaze to John, who stood, with his knee in a chair, just behind her. He looked at the convalescent with solemn steadfastness. The husband smiled broadly.

"I know what you mean. I'll try to deserve her."

The Doctor looked again into the west.

"Good-by."

Mary tried playfully to retort, but John restrained her, and when she contrived to utter something absurdly complimentary of her husband he was her only hearer.

They went back into the house, talking of other matters. Something turned the conversation upon Mrs. Riley, and from that subject it seemed to pass naturally to Ristofalo. Mary, laughing and talking softly as they entered their room, called to John's recollection the Italian's account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt of the pattern called a "jumper," and had worked as a deck-hand in loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been as ingeniously wise, he thought.

"Ristofalo is coming here this evening," said he, taking a seat in the alley window.

Mary looked at him with sidelong merriment. The Italian was coming to see Mrs. Riley.

"Why, John," whispered Mary, standing beside him, "she's nearly ten years older than he is!"

But John quoted the old saying about a man's age being what he feels, and a woman's what she looks.

"Why,—but—dear, it is scarcely a fortnight since she declared nothing could ever induce"—

"Let her alone," said John, indulgently. "Hasn't she said half-a-dozen times that it isn't good for woman to be alone? A widow's a woman—and you never disputed it."

"O John," laughed Mary, "for shame! You know I didn't mean that. You know I never could mean that."

And when John would have maintained his ground she besought him not to jest in that direction, with eyes so ready for tears that he desisted.

"I only meant to be generous to Mrs. Riley," he said.

"I know it," said Mary, caressingly; "you're always on the generous side of everything."

She rested her hand fondly on his arm, and he took it into his own.

One evening the pair were out for that sunset walk which their young blood so relished, and which often led them, as it did this time, across the wide, open commons behind the town, where the unsettled streets were turf-grown, and toppling wooden lamp-posts threatened to fall into the wide, cattle-trodden ditches.

"Fall is coming," said Mary.

"Let it come!" exclaimed John; "it's hung back long enough."

He looked about with pleasure. On every hand the advancing season was giving promise of heightened activity. The dark, plumy foliage of the china trees was getting a golden edge. The burnished green of the great magnolias was spotted brilliantly with hundreds of bursting cones, red with their pendent seeds. Here and there, as the sauntering pair came again into the region of brick sidewalks, a falling cone would now and then scatter its polished coral over the pavement, to be gathered by little girls for necklaces, or bruised under foot, staining the walk with its fragrant oil. The ligustrums bent low under the dragging weight of their small clustered berries. The oranges were turning. In the wet, choked ditches along the interruptions of pavement, where John followed Mary on narrow plank footways, bloomed thousands of little unrenowned asteroid flowers, blue and yellow, and the small, pink spikes of the water pepper. It wasn't the fashionable habit in those days, but Mary had John gather big bunches of this pretty floral mob, and filled her room with them—not Mrs. Riley's parlor—whoop, no! Weeds? Not if Mrs. Riley knew herself.

So ran time apace. The morning skies were gray monotones, and the evening gorgeous reds. The birds had finished their summer singing. Sometimes the alert chirp of the cardinal suddenly smote the ear from some neighboring tree; but he would pass, a flash of crimson, from one garden to the next, and with another chirp or two be gone for days. The nervy, unmusical waking cry of the mocking-bird was often the first daybreak sound. At times a myriad downy seed floated everywhere, now softly upward, now gently downward, and the mellow rays of sunset turned it into a warm, golden snow-fall. By night a soft glow from distant burning prairies showed the hunters were afield; the call of unseen wild fowl was heard overhead, and—finer to the waiting poor man's ear than all other sounds—came at regular intervals, now from this quarter and now from that, the heavy, rushing blast of the cotton compress, telling that the flood tide of commerce was setting in.

Narcisse surprised the Richlings one evening with a call. They tried very hard to be reserved, but they were too young for that task to be easy. The Creole had evidently come with his mind made up to take unresentfully and override all the unfriendliness they might choose to show. His conversation never ceased, but flitted from subject to subject with the swift waywardness of a humming-bird. It was remarked by Mary, leaning back in one end of Mrs. Riley's little sofa, that "summer dresses were disappearing, but that the girls looked just as sweet in their darker colors as they had appeared in midsummer white. Had Narcisse noticed? Probably he didn't care for"—

"Ho! I notiz them an' they notiz me! An' thass one thing I 'ave notiz about young ladies: they ah juz like those bird'; in summeh lookin' cool, in winteh waum. I 'ave notiz that. An' I've notiz anotheh thing which make them juz like those bird'. They halways know if a man is lookin', an' they halways make like they don't see 'im! I would like to 'ite an i'ony about that—a lill i'ony—in the he'oic measuh. You like that he'oic measuh, Mizzez Witchlin'?"

As he rose to go he rolled a cigarette, and folded the end in with the long nail of his little finger.

"Mizzez Witchlin', if you will allow me to light my ciga'ette fum yo' lamp—I can't use my sun-glass at night, because the sun is nod theh. But, the sun shining, I use it. I 'ave adop' that method since lately."

"You borrow the sun's rays," said Mary, with wicked sweetness.

"Yes; 'tis cheapeh than matches in the longue 'un."

"You have discovered that, I suppose," remarked John.

"Me? The sun-glass? No. I believe Ahchimides invend that, in fact. An' yet, out of ten thousan' who use the sun-glass only a few can account 'ow tis done. 'Ow did you think that that's my invention, Mistoo Itchlin? Did you know that I am something of a chimist? I can tu'n litmus papeh 'ed by juz dipping it in SO_3HO. Yesseh."

"Yes," said Richling, "that's one thing that I have noticed, that you're very fertile in devices."

"Yes," echoed Mary, "I noticed that, the first time you ever came to see us. I only wish Mr. Richling was half as much so."

She beamed upon her husband. Narcisse laughed with pure pleasure.

"Well, I am compel' to say you ah co'ect. I am continually makin' some discove'ies. 'Necessity's the motheh of inventions.' Now thass anotheh thing I 'ave notiz—about that month of Octobeh: it always come befo' you think it's comin'. I 'ave notiz that about eve'y month. Now, to-day we ah the twennieth Octobeh! Is it not so?" He lighted his cigarette. "You ah compel' to co'obo'ate me."



CHAPTER XXX.

LIGHTING SHIP.

Yes, the tide was coming in. The Richlings' bark was still on the sands, but every now and then a wave of promise glided under her. She might float, now, any day. Meantime, as has no doubt been guessed, she was held on an even keel by loans from the Doctor.

"Why you don't advertise in papers?" asked Ristofalo.

"Advertise? Oh, I didn't think it would be of any use. I advertised a whole week, last summer."

"You put advertisement in wrong time and keep it out wrong time," said the Italian.

"I have a place in prospect, now, without advertising," said Richling, with an elated look.

It was just here that a new mistake of Richling's emerged. He had come into contact with two or three men of that wretched sort that indulge the strange vanity of keeping others waiting upon them by promises of employment. He believed them, liked them heartily because they said nothing about references, and gratefully distended himself with their husks, until Ristofalo opened his eyes by saying, when one of these men had disappointed Richling the third time:—

"Business man don't promise but once."

"You lookin' for book-keeper's place?" asked the Italian at another time. "Why don't dress like a book-keeper?"

"On borrowed money?" asked Richling, evidently looking upon that question as a poser.

"Yes."

"Oh, no," said Richling, with a smile of superiority; but the other one smiled too, and shook his head.

"Borrow mo', if you don't."

Richling's heart flinched at the word. He had thought he was giving his true reason; but he was not. A foolish notion had floated, like a grain of dust, into the over-delicate wheels of his thought,—that men would employ him the more readily if he looked needy. His hat was unbrushed, his shoes unpolished; he had let his beard come out, thin and untrimmed; his necktie was faded. He looked battered. When the Italian's gentle warning showed him this additional mistake on top of all his others he was dismayed at himself; and when he sat down in his room and counted the cost of an accountant's uniform, so to speak, the remains of Dr. Sevier's last loan to him was too small for it. Thereupon he committed one error more,—but it was the last. He sunk his standard, and began again to look for service among industries that could offer employment only to manual labor. He crossed the river and stirred about among the dry-docks and ship-carpenters' yards of the suburb Algiers. But he could neither hew spars, nor paint, nor splice ropes. He watched a man half a day calking a boat; then he offered himself for the same work, did it fairly, and earned half a day's wages. But then the boat was done, and there was no other calking at the moment along the whole harbor front, except some that was being done on a ship by her own sailors.

"John," said Mary, dropping into her lap the sewing that hardly paid for her candle, "isn't it hard to realize that it isn't twelve months since your hardships commenced? They can't last much longer, darling."

"I know that," said John. "And I know I'll find a place presently, and then we'll wake up to the fact that this was actually less than a year of trouble in a lifetime of love."

"Yes," rejoined Mary, "I know your patience will be rewarded."

"But what I want is work now, Mary. The bread of idleness is getting too bitter. But never mind; I'm going to work to-morrow;—never mind where. It's all right. You'll see."

She smiled, and looked into his eyes again with a confession of unreserved trust. The next day he reached the—what shall we say?—big end of his last mistake. What it was came out a few mornings after, when he called at Number 5 Carondelet street.

"The Doctah is not in pwesently," said Narcisse. "He ve'y hawdly comes in so soon as that. He's living home again, once mo', now. He's ve'y un'estless. I tole 'im yistiddy, 'Doctah, I know juz 'ow you feel, seh; 'tis the same way with myseff. You ought to git ma'ied!'"

"Did he say he would?" asked Richling.

"Well, you know, Mistoo Itchlin, so the povvub says, 'Silent give consense.' He juz look at me—nevvah said a word—ha! he couldn'! You not lookin' ve'y well, Mistoo Itchlin. I suppose 'tis that waum weatheh."

"I suppose it is; at least, partly," said Richling, and added nothing more, but looked along and across the ceiling, and down at a skeleton in a corner, that was offering to shake hands with him. He was at a loss how to talk to Narcisse. Both Mary and he had grown a little ashamed of their covert sarcasms, and yet to leave them out was bread without yeast, meat without salt, as far as their own powers of speech were concerned.

"I thought, the other day," he began again, with an effort, "when it blew up cool, that the warm weather was over."

"It seem to be finishin' ad the end, I think," responded the Creole. "I think, like you, that we 'ave 'ad too waum weatheh. Me, I like that weatheh to be cole, me. I halways weigh the mose in cole weatheh. I gain flesh, in fact. But so soon 'tis summeh somethin' become of it. I dunno if 'tis the fault of my close, but I reduct in summeh. Speakin' of close, Mistoo Itchlin,—egscuse me if 'tis a fair question,—w'at was yo' objec' in buyin' that tawpaulin hat an' jacket lass week ad that sto' on the levee? You din know I saw you, but I juz 'appen to see you, in fact." (The color rose in Richling's face, and Narcisse pressed on without allowing an answer.) "Well, thass none o' my biziness, of co'se, but I think you lookin' ve'y bad, Mistoo Itchlin"— He stopped very short and stepped with dignified alacrity to his desk, for Dr. Sevier's step was on the stair.

The Doctor shook hands with Richling and sank into the chair at his desk. "Anything turned up yet, Richling?"

"Doctor," began Richling, drawing his chair near and speaking low.

"Good-mawnin', Doctah," said Narcisse, showing himself with a graceful flourish.

The Doctor nodded, then turned again to Richling. "You were saying"—

"I 'ope you well, seh," insisted the Creole, and as the Doctor glanced toward him impatiently, repeated the sentiment, "'Ope you well, seh."

The Doctor said he was, and turned once more to Richling. Narcisse bowed away backward and went to his desk, filled to the eyes with fierce satisfaction. He had made himself felt. Richling drew his chair nearer and spoke low:—

"If I don't get work within a day or two I shall have to come to you for money."

"That's all right, Richling." The Doctor spoke aloud; Richling answered low.

"Oh, no, Doctor, it's all wrong! Indeed, I can't do it any more unless you will let me earn the money."

"My dear sir, I would most gladly do it; but I have nothing that you can do."

"Yes, you have, Doctor."

"What is it?"

"Why, it's this: you have a slave boy driving your carriage."

"Well?"

"Give him some other work, and let me do that."

Dr. Sevier started in his seat. "Richling, I can't do that. I should ruin you. If you drive my carriage"—

"Just for a time, Doctor, till I find something else."

"No! no! If you drive my carriage in New Orleans you'll never do anything else."

"Why, Doctor, there are men standing in the front ranks to-day, who"—

"Yes, yes," replied the Doctor, impatiently, "I know,—who began with menial labor; but—I can't explain it to you, Richling, but you're not of the same sort; that's all. I say it without praise or blame; you must have work adapted to your abilities."

"My abilities!" softly echoed Richling. Tears sprang to his eyes. He held out his open palms,—"Doctor, look there." They were lacerated. He started to rise, but the Doctor prevented him.

"Let me go," said Richling, pleadingly, and with averted face. "Let me go. I'm sorry I showed them. It was mean and foolish and weak. Let me go."

But Dr. Sevier kept a hand on him, and he did not resist. The Doctor took one of the hands and examined it. "Why, Richling, you've been handling freight!"

"There was nothing else."

"Oh, bah!"

"Let me go," whispered Richling. But the Doctor held him.

"You didn't do this on the steam-boat landing, did you, Richling?"

The young man nodded. The Doctor dropped the hand and looked upon its owner with set lips and steady severity. When he spoke he said:—

"Among the negro and green Irish deck-hands, and under the oaths and blows of steam-boat mates! Why, Richling!" He turned half away in his rotary chair with an air of patience worn out.

"You thought I had more sense," said Richling.

The Doctor put his elbows upon his desk and slowly drew his face upward through his hands. "Mr. Richling, what is the matter with you?" They gazed at each other a long moment, and then Dr. Sevier continued: "Your trouble isn't want of sense. I know that very well, Richling." His voice was low and became kind. "But you don't get the use of the sense you have. It isn't available." He bent forward: "Some men, Richling, carry their folly on the surface and their good sense at the bottom,"—he jerked his thumb backward toward the distant Narcisse, and added, with a stealthy frown,—"like that little fool in yonder. He's got plenty of sense, but he doesn't load any of it on deck. Some men carry their sense on top and their folly down below"—

Richling smiled broadly through his dejection, and touched his own chest. "Like this big fool here," he said.

"Exactly," said Dr. Sevier. "Now you've developed a defect of the memory. Your few merchantable qualities have been so long out of the market, and you've suffered such humiliation under the pressure of adversity, that you've—you've done a very bad thing."

"Say a dozen," responded Richling, with bitter humor. But the Doctor swung his head in resentment of the levity.

"One's enough. You've allowed yourself to forget your true value."

"I'm worth whatever I'll bring."

The Doctor tossed his head in impatient disdain.

"Pshaw! You'll never bring what you're worth any more than some men are worth what they bring. You don't know how. You never will know."

"Well, Doctor, I do know that I'm worth more than I ever was before. I've learned a thousand things in the last twelvemonth. If I can only get a chance to prove it!" Richling turned red and struck his knee with his fist.

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Sevier; "that's your sense, on top. And then you go—in a fit of the merest impatience, as I do suspect—and offer yourself as a deck-hand and as a carriage-driver. That's your folly, at the bottom. What ought to be done to such a man?" He gave a low, harsh laugh. Richling dropped his eyes. A silence followed.

"You say all you want is a chance," resumed the Doctor.

"Yes," quickly answered Richling, looking up.

"I'm going to give it to you." They looked into each other's eyes. The Doctor nodded. "Yes, sir." He nodded again.

"Where did you come from, Richling,—when you came to New Orleans,—you and your wife? Milwaukee?"

"Yes."

"Do your relatives know of your present condition?"

"No."

"Is your wife's mother comfortably situated?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll tell you what you must do."

"The only thing I can't do," said Richling.

"Yes, you can. You must. You must send Mrs. Richling back to her mother."

Richling shook his head.

"Well," said the Doctor, warmly, "I say you must. I will lend you the passage-money."

Richling's eye kindled an instant at the Doctor's compulsory tone, but he said, gently:—

"Why, Doctor, Mary will never consent to leave me."

"Of course she will not. But you must make her do it! That's what you must do. And when that's done then you must start out and go systematically from door to door,—of business houses, I mean,—offering yourself for work befitting your station—ahem!—station, I say—and qualifications. I will lend you money to live on until you find permanent employment. Now, now, don't get alarmed! I'm not going to help you any more than I absolutely must!"

"But, Doctor, how can you expect"— But the Doctor interrupted.

"Come, now, none of that! You and your wife are brave; I must say that for you. She has the courage of a gladiator. You can do this if you will."

"Doctor," said Richling, "you are the best of friends; but, you know, the fact is, Mary and I—well, we're still lovers."

"Oh!" The Doctor turned away his head with fresh impatience. Richling bit his lip, but went on:—

"We can bear anything on earth together; but we have sworn to stay together through better and worse"—

"Oh, pf-f-f-f!" said the doctor, closing his eyes and swinging his head away again.

"—And we're going to do it," concluded Richling.

"But you can't do it!" cried the Doctor, so loudly that Narcisse stood up on the rungs of his stool and peered.

"We can't separate."

Dr. Sevier smote the desk and sprang to his feet:—

"Sir, you've got to do it! If you continue in this way, you'll die. You'll die, Mr. Richling—both of you! You'll die! Are you going to let Mary die just because she's brave enough to do it?" He sat down again and busied himself, nervously placing pens on the pen-rack, the stopper in the inkstand, and the like.

Many thoughts ran through Richling's mind in the ensuing silence. His eyes were on the floor. Visions of parting; of the great emptiness that would be left behind; the pangs and yearnings that must follow,—crowded one upon another. One torturing realization kept ever in the front,—that the Doctor had a well-earned right to advise, and that, if his advice was to be rejected, one must show good and sufficient cause for rejecting it, both in present resources and in expectations. The truth leaped upon him and bore him down as it never had done before,—the truth which he had heard this very Dr. Sevier proclaim,—that debt is bondage. For a moment he rebelled against it; but shame soon displaced mutiny, and he accepted this part, also, of his lot. At length he rose.

"Well?" said Dr. Sevier.

"May I ask Mary?"

"You will do what you please, Mr. Richling." And then, in a kinder voice, the Doctor added, "Yes; ask her."

They moved together to the office door. The Doctor opened it, and they said good-by, Richling trying to drop a word of gratitude, and the Doctor hurriedly ignoring it.

The next half hour or more was spent by the physician in receiving, hearing, and dismissing patients and their messengers. By and by no others came. The only audible sound was that of the Doctor's paper-knife as it parted the leaves of a pamphlet. He was thinking over the late interview with Richling, and knew that, if this silence were not soon interrupted from without, he would have to encounter his book-keeper, who had not spoken since Richling had left. Presently the issue came.

"Dr. Seveeah,"—Narcisse came forward, hat in hand,—"I dunno 'ow 'tis, but Mistoo Itchlin always wemine me of that povvub, 'Ully to bed, ully to 'ise, make a pusson to be 'ealthy an' wealthy an' wise.'"

"I don't know how it is, either," grumbled the Doctor.

"I believe thass not the povvub I was thinking. I am acquainting myseff with those povvubs; but I'm somewhat gween in that light, in fact. Well, Doctah, I'm goin' ad the—shoemakeh. I burs' my shoe yistiddy. I was juz"—

"Very well, go."

"Yesseh; and from the shoemakeh I'll go"—

The Doctor glanced darkly over the top of the pamphlet.

"—Ad the bank; yesseh," said Narcisse, and went.



CHAPTER XXXI.

AT LAST.

Mary, cooking supper, uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure and relief as she heard John's step under the alley window and then at the door. She turned, with an iron spoon in one hand and a candlestick in the other, from the little old stove with two pot-holes, where she had been stirring some mess in a tin pan.

"Why, you're"—she reached for a kiss—"real late!"

"I could not come any sooner." He dropped into a chair at the table.

"Busy?"

"No; no work to-day."

Mary lifted the pan from the stove, whisked it to the table, and blew her fingers.

"Same subject continued," she said laughingly, pointing with her spoon to the warmed-over food.

Richling smiled and nodded, and then flattened his elbows out on the table and hid his face in them.

This was the first time he had ever lingered away from his wife when he need not have done so. It was the Doctor's proposition that had kept him back. All day long it had filled his thoughts. He felt its wisdom. Its sheer practical value had pierced remorselessly into the deepest convictions of his mind. But his heart could not receive it.

"Well," said Mary, brightly, as she sat down at the table, "maybe you'll have better luck to-morrow. Don't you think you may?"

"I don't know," said John, straightening up and tossing back his hair. He pushed a plate up to the pan, supplied and passed it. Then he helped himself and fell to eating.

"Have you seen Dr. Sevier to-day?" asked Mary, cautiously, seeing her husband pause and fall into distraction.

He pushed his plate away and rose. She met him in the middle of the room. He extended both hands, took hers, and gazed upon her. How could he tell? Would she cry and lament, and spurn the proposition, and fall upon him with a hundred kisses? Ah, if she would! But he saw that Doctor Sevier, at least, was confident she would not; that she would have, instead, what the wife so often has in such cases, the strongest love, it may be, but also the strongest wisdom for that particular sort of issue. Which would she do? Would she go, or would she not?

He tried to withdraw his hands, but she looked beseechingly into his eyes and knit her fingers into his. The question stuck upon his lips and would not be uttered. And why should it be? Was it not cowardice to leave the decision to her? Should not he decide? Oh! if she would only rebel! But would she? Would not her utmost be to give good reasons in her gentle, inquiring way why he should not require her to leave him? And were there any such? No! no! He had racked his brain to find so much as one, all day long.

"John," said Mary, "Dr. Sevier's been talking to you?"

"Yes."

"And he wants you to send me back home for a while?"

"How do you know?" asked John, with a start.

"I can read it in your face." She loosed one hand and laid it upon his brow.

"What—what do you think about it, Mary?"

Mary, looking into his eyes with the face of one who pleads for mercy, whispered, "He's right," then buried her face in his bosom and wept like a babe.

"I felt it six months ago," she said later, sitting on her husband's knee and holding his folded hands tightly in hers.

"Why didn't you say so?" asked John.

"I was too selfish," was her reply.

When, on the second day afterward, they entered the Doctor's office Richling was bright with that new hope which always rises up beside a new experiment, and Mary looked well and happy. The Doctor wrote them a letter of introduction to the steam-boat agent.

"You're taking a very sensible course," he said, smoothing the blotting-paper heavily over the letter. "Of course, you think it's hard. It is hard. But distance needn't separate you."

"It can't," said Richling.

"Time," continued the Doctor,—"maybe a few months,—will bring you together again, prepared for a long life of secure union; and then, when you look back upon this, you'll be proud of your courage and good sense. And you'll be"— He enclosed the note, directed the envelope, and, pausing with it still in his hand, turned toward the pair. They rose up. His rare, sick-room smile hovered about his mouth, and he said:—

"You'll be all the happier—all three of you."

The husband smiled. Mary colored down to the throat and looked up on the wall, where Harvey was explaining to his king the circulation of the blood. There was quite a pause, neither side caring to utter the first adieu.

"If a physician could call any hour his own," presently said the Doctor, "I should say I would come down to the boat and see you off. But I might fail in that. Good-by!"

"Good-by, Doctor!"—a little tremor in the voice,—"take care of John."

The tall man looked down into the upturned blue eyes.

"Good-by!" He stooped toward her forehead, but she lifted her lips and he kissed them. So they parted.

The farewell with Mrs. Riley was mainly characterized by a generous and sincere exchange of compliments and promises of remembrance. Some tears rose up; a few ran over.

At the steam-boat wharf there were only the pair themselves to cling one moment to each other and then wave that mute farewell that looks through watery eyes and sticks in the choking throat. Who ever knows what good-by means?

* * *

"Doctor," said Richling, when he came to accept those terms in the Doctor's proposition which applied more exclusively to himself,—"no, Doctor, not that way, please." He put aside the money proffered him. "This is what I want to do: I will come to your house every morning and get enough to eat to sustain me through the day, and will continue to do so till I find work."

"Very well," said the Doctor.

The arrangement went into effect. They never met at dinner; but almost every morning the Doctor, going into the breakfast-room, met Richling just risen from his earlier and hastier meal.

"Well? Anything yet?"

"Nothing yet."

And, unless there was some word from Mary, nothing more would be said. So went the month of November.

But at length, one day toward the close of the Doctor's office hours, he noticed the sound of an agile foot springing up his stairs three steps at a stride, and Richling entered, panting and radiant.

"Doctor, at last! At last!"

"At last, what?"

"I've found employment! I have, indeed! One line from you, and the place is mine! A good place, Doctor, and one that I can fill. The very thing for me! Adapted to my abilities!" He laughed so that he coughed, was still, and laughed again. "Just a line, if you please, Doctor."



CHAPTER XXXII.

A RISING STAR.

It had been many a day since Dr. Sevier had felt such pleasure as thrilled him when Richling, half beside himself with delight, ran in upon him with the news that he had found employment. Narcisse, too, was glad. He slipped down from his stool and came near enough to contribute his congratulatory smiles, though he did not venture to speak. Richling nodded him a happy how-d'ye-do, and the Creole replied by a wave of the hand.

In the Doctor's manner, on the other hand, there was a decided lack of response that made Richling check his spirits and resume more slowly,—

"Do you know a man named Reisen?"

"No," said the Doctor.

"Why, he says he knows you."

"That may be."

"He says you treated his wife one night when she was very ill"—

"What name?"

"Reisen."

The Doctor reflected a moment.

"I believe I recollect him. Is he away up on Benjamin street, close to the river, among the cotton-presses?"

"Yes. Thalia street they call it now. He says"—

"Does he keep a large bakery?" interrupted the Doctor.

"The 'Star Bakery,'" said Richling, brightening again. "He says he knows you, and that, if you will give me just one line of recommendation, he will put me in charge of his accounts and give me a trial. And a trial's all I want, Doctor. I'm not the least fearful of the result."

"Richling," said Dr. Sevier, slowly picking up his paper-folder and shaking it argumentatively, "where are the letters I advised you to send for?"

Richling sat perfectly still, taking a long, slow breath through his nostrils, his eyes fixed emptily on his questioner. He was thinking, away down at the bottom of his heart,—and the Doctor knew it,—that this was the unkindest question, and the most cold-blooded, that he had ever heard. The Doctor shook his paper-folder again.

"You see, now, as to the bare fact, I don't know you."

Richling's jaw dropped with astonishment. His eye lighted up resentfully. But the speaker went on:—

"I esteem you highly. I believe in you. I would trust you, Richling,"—his listener remembered how the speaker had trusted him, and was melted,—"but as to recommending you, why, that is like going upon the witness-stand, as it were, and I cannot say that I know anything."

Richling's face suddenly flashed full of light. He touched the Doctor's hand.

"That's it! That's the very thing, sir! Write that!"

The Doctor hesitated. Richling sat gazing at him, afraid to move an eye lest he should lose an advantage. The Doctor turned to his desk and wrote.

* * *

On the next morning Richling did not come for his breakfast; and, not many days after, Dr. Sevier received through the mail the following letter:—

NEW ORLEANS, December 2, 1857.

DEAR DOCTOR,—I've got the place. I'm Reisen's book-keeper. I'm earning my living. And I like the work. Bread, the word bread, that has so long been terrible to me, is now the sweetest word in the language. For eighteen months it was a prayer; now it's a proclamation.

I've not only got the place, but I'm going to keep it. I find I have new powers; and the first and best of them is the power to throw myself into my work and make it me. It's not a task; it's a mission. Its being bread, I suppose, makes it easier to seem so; but it should be so if it was pork and garlic, or rags and raw-hides.

My maxim a year ago, though I didn't know it then, was to do what I liked. Now it's to like what I do. I understand it now. And I understand now, too, that a man who expects to retain employment must yield a profit. He must be worth more than he costs. I thank God for the discipline of the last year and a half. I thank him that I did not fall where, in my cowardice, I so often prayed to fall, into the hands of foolish benefactors. You wouldn't believe this of me, I know; but it's true. I have been taught what life is; I never would have learned it any other way.

And still another thing: I have been taught to know what the poor suffer. I know their feelings, their temptations, their hardships, their sad mistakes, and the frightful mistakes and oversights the rich make concerning them, and the ways to give them true and helpful help. And now, if God ever gives me competency, whether he gives me abundance or not, I know what he intends me to do. I was once, in fact and in sentiment, a brother to the rich; but I know that now he has trained me to be a brother to the poor. Don't think I am going to be foolish. I remember that I'm brother to the rich too; but I'll be the other as well. How wisely has God—what am I saying? Poor fools that we humans are! We can hardly venture to praise God's wisdom to-day when we think we see it, lest it turn out to be only our own folly to-morrow.

But I find I'm only writing to myself, Doctor, not to you; so I stop. Mary is well, and sends you much love.

Yours faithfully, JOHN RICHLING.

"Very little about Mary," murmured Dr. Sevier. Yet he was rather pleased than otherwise with the letter. He thrust it into his breast-pocket. In the evening, at his fireside, he drew it out again and re-read it.

"Talks as if he had got into an impregnable castle," thought the Doctor, as he gazed into the fire. "Book-keeper to a baker," he muttered, slowly folding the sheet again. It somehow vexed him to see Richling so happy in so low a station. But—"It's the joy of what he has escaped from, not to," he presently remembered.

A fortnight or more elapsed. A distant relative of Dr. Sevier, a man of his own years and profession, was his guest for two nights and a day as he passed through the city, eastward, from an all-summer's study of fevers in Mexico. They were sitting at evening on opposite sides of the library fire, conversing in the leisurely ease of those to whom life is not a novelty.

"And so you think of having Laura and Bess come out from Charleston, and keep house for you this winter? Their mother wrote me to that effect."

"Yes," said Dr. Sevier. "Society here will be a great delight to them. They will shine. And time will be less monotonous for me. It may suit me, or it may not."

"I dare say it may," responded the kinsman, whereas in truth he was very doubtful about it.

He added something, a moment later, about retiring for the night, and his host had just said, "Eh?" when a slave, in a five-year-old dress-coat, brought in the card of a person whose name was as well known in New Orleans in those days as St. Patrick's steeple or the statue of Jackson in the old Place d'Armes. Dr. Sevier turned it over and looked for a moment ponderingly upon the domestic.

The relative rose.

"You needn't go," said Dr. Sevier; but he said "he had intended," etc., and went to his chamber.

The visitor entered. He was a dark, slender, iron gray man, of finely cut, regular features, and seeming to be much more deeply wrinkled than on scrutiny he proved to be. One quickly saw that he was full of reposing energy. He gave the feeling of your being very near some weapon, of dreadful efficiency, ready for instant use whenever needed. His clothing fitted him neatly; his long, gray mustache was the only thing that hung loosely about him; his boots were fine. If he had told a child that all his muscles and sinews were wrapped with fine steel wire the child would have believed him, and continued to sit on his knee all the same. It is said, by those who still survive him, that in dreadful places and moments the flash of his fist was as quick, as irresistible, and as all-sufficient, as lightning, yet that years would sometimes pass without its ever being lifted.

Dr. Sevier lifted his slender length out of his easy-chair, and bowed with severe gravity.

"Good-evening, sir," he said, and silently thought, "Now, what can Smith Izard possibly want with me?"

It may have been perfectly natural that this man's presence shed off all idea of medical consultation; but why should it instantly bring to the Doctor's mind, as an answer to his question, another man as different from this one as water from fire?

The detective returned the Doctor's salutation, and they became seated. Then the visitor craved permission to ask a confidential question or two for information which he was seeking in his official capacity. His manners were a little old-fashioned, but perfect of their kind. The Doctor consented. The man put his hand into his breast-pocket, and drew out a daguerreotype case, touched its spring, and as it opened in his palm extended it to the Doctor. The Doctor took it with evident reluctance. It contained the picture of a youth who was just reaching manhood. The detective spoke:—

"They say he ought to look older than that now."

"He does," said Dr. Sevier.

"Do you know his name?" inquired the detective.

"No."

"What name do you know him by?"

"John Richling."

"Wasn't he sent down by Recorder Munroe, last summer, for assault, etc.?"

"Yes. I got him out the next day. He never should have been put in."

To the Doctor's surprise the detective rose to go.

"I'm much obliged to you, Doctor."

"Is that all you wanted to ask me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Izard, who is this young man? What has he done?"

"I don't know, sir. I have a letter from a lawyer in Kentucky who says he represents this young man's two sisters living there,—half-sisters, rather,—stating that his father and mother are both dead,—died within three days of each other."

"What name?"

"He didn't give the name. He sent this daguerreotype, with instructions to trace up the young man, if possible. He said there was reason to believe he was in New Orleans. He said, if I found him, just to see him privately, tell him the news, and invite him to come back home. But he said if the young fellow had got into any kind of trouble that might somehow reflect on the family, you know, like getting arrested for something or other, you know, or some such thing, then I was just to drop the thing quietly, and say nothing about it to him or anybody else."