"Oh, I've read it again, Mr. Straws!" she exclaimed, impetuously.

"What?" he returned, sternly, pausing at the foot of the steps.

"Your—your lovely Strophes!" she continued, timidly.

The bard frowned. "All great men profess to scowl at flattery," thought Straws. "She will have but a poor opinion of me, if I do not appear an offended Hector!"

"Mademoiselle, I excessively dislike compliments," he began aloud, but having gone thus far, his courage and lack of chivalry failed him in the presence of her dismay; he forgot his greatness, and hastened to add, with an ingratiating smile: "Except when delivered by such a charming person!"

"Oh, Mr. Straws!"

"This, Mademoiselle," resumed the bard, "is the young girl I spoke about. Her mother," he added in a low voice, "was a beautiful quadroon; her father"—here Straws mentioned a name. The wardeness flushed furiously. "Father died; always meant to make it right; didn't; crime of good intentions! Virago of an aunt; regular termagant; hates the girl! Where was a home to be found for her? Where"—gazing around him—"save this—Eden? Where a mother—save in one whose heart is the tenderest?"

Diplomatic Straws! Impulsively the wardeness crossed to Celestina; her blue eyes beamed with sentiment and friendliness. "I will give her my personal attention," she said. And then to the young girl: "We will be friends, won't we?"

"Yes," replied Celestina, slowly, after a moment's discreet hesitation. She was glad the other did not kiss her like Feu-de-joie.

"I always like," said the wardeness, "to feel my little girls are all my little friends."

"Mademoiselle," exclaimed the bard, "I'll—I'll dedicate my next volume of poems to you!"

"Really, Mr. Straws!"

"For every kindness to her, you shall have a verse," he further declared.

"Then your dedication would be as long as Homer!" she suddenly flashed out, her arm around the child.

Straws looked at her quickly. It was too bad of him! And that borrowed Don Juan smile! Nothing could excuse it.

Castiglione busied herself with Celestina's ribbons. "Whoever did tie that bow-knot?" she observed.

"Good-by, Celestina," said Straws.

Celestina put her arms gravely about his neck and he pressed his lips to her cheek. Then he strode quickly toward the gate. Just before passing out, he looked back. The wardeness had finished adjusting the ribbon and was contemplatively inspecting it. Celestina, as though unconscious of the attention, was gazing after the poet, and when he turned into the road, her glance continued to rest upon the gate.



CHAPTER IV

"THE BEST OF LIFE"

On a certain evening about a month later, the tropical rains had flooded the thoroughfares, until St. Charles Street needed but a Rialto and a little imagination to convert it into a watery highway of another Venice, while as for Canal Street, its name was as applicable as though it were spanned by a Bridge of Sighs. In the narrow streets the projecting eaves poured the water from the roof to the sidewalks, deluging the pedestrians. These minor thoroughfares were tributary to the main avenues and gushed their rippling currents into them, as streams supply a river, until the principal streets flowed swiftly with the dirty water that choked their gutters. The rain splashed and spattered on the sidewalks, fairly flooding out the fruit venders and street merchants who withstood the deluge for a time and then were forced to vanish with their portable stores. The cabby, phlegmatic to wind and weather, sat on his box, shedding the moisture from his oil-skin coat and facing a cloud of steam which presumably concealed a horse.

The dark night and the downpour made the cafes look brighter. Umbrellas flitted here and there, skilfully piloted beneath swinging signs and low balconies, evading awning posts and high hats as best they might. There were as many people out as usual, but they were hurrying to their destinations, even the languid creole beauty, all lace and alabaster, moved with the sprightliness of a maid of Gotham.

Straws, editor and rhymster, was seated on the semi-Oriental, semi-French gallery of the little cafe, called the Veranda, sipping his absinthe, smoking a cheroot and watching the rain drip from the roof of the balcony, spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly poised in mid air.

"Confound it!" he said to himself. "I can't write in the attic any more, since Celestina has gone, and apparently I can't write away from it. Since she left, the dishes haven't been washed; my work has run down at the heels, and everything is going to the dogs generally. And now this last thing has upset me quite. 'In the twinkling of an eye,' says the sacred Book. But I must stop thinking, or I'll never complete this poem. Now to make my mind a blank; a fitting receptacle to receive inspiration!"

The bard's figure swayed uncertainly on the stool. In the lively race through a sonnet, it was often, of late, a matter of doubt with Straws, whether Bacchus or Calliope would prevail at the finish, and to-night the jocund god had had a perceptible start. "Was ever a poet so rhyme-fuddled?" muttered the impatient versifier. "An inebriating trade, this poetizing!"—and he reached for the absinthe. "If I am not careful, these rhymes will put me under the table!"

"Nappy, eh?" said a voice at his elbow, as a dripping figure approached, deposited his hat on one chair and himself in another. The newcomer had a long, Gothic face and a merry-wise expression.

The left hand of the poet waved mechanically, imposing silence; the quill dived suddenly to paper, trailed twice across it, and then was cast aside, as Straws looked up.

"Yes," he replied to the other's interrogation. "It's all on account of Celestina's leaving me. You ought to see my room. Even a poet's soul revolts against it. So what can I do, save make my home amid convivial haunts?" The poet sighed. "And you, Phazma; how are you feeling?"

"Sober as a judge!"

"Then you shall judge of this last couplet," exclaimed Straws quickly. "It has cost me much effort. The editor wanted it. It seemed almost too sad a subject for my halting muse. There are some things which should be sacred even from us, Phazma. But what is to be done when the editor-in-chief commands? 'Ours not to reason why!' The poem is a monody on the tragedy at the theater."

"At the St. Charles?" said Phazma, musingly. "As I passed, it was closed. It seemed early for the performance to be over. Yet the theater was dark; all the lights had gone out."

"More than the lights went out," answered Straws, gravely; "a life went out!"

"I don't exactly—Oh, you refer to Miss Carew's farewell?"

"No; to Barnes'!"

"Barnes'!" exclaimed his surprised listener.

"Yes; he is dead; gone out like the snuff of a candle! Died in harness, before the footlights!"

"During the performance!" cried the wondering Phazma. "Why, only this afternoon I met him, apparently hale and hearty, and now—you tell me he has paid the debt of nature?"

"As we must all pay it," returned Straws. "He acted as if he were dazed while the play was in progress and I could not but notice it, standing in the wings. The prompter spoke of it to me. 'I don't know what is the matter with Mr. Barnes,' he said, 'I have had to keep throwing him his lines.' Even Miss Carew rallied him gently between acts on his subdued manner.

"'This is our last performance together,' he said absently. She gave him a reproachful look and he added, quickly: 'Do I appear gloomy, my dear? I never felt happier.'

"At the end of the second act he seemed to arouse himself, when she, as Isabella, said: 'I'll fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.' He gazed at her long and earnestly, his look caressing her wherever she moved. Beginning the prison scene with spirit, he had proceeded to,

"'Reason thus with life; If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep—'

When suddenly he threw up his arms and fell upon the stage, his face toward the audience. With a cry I shall never forget, Miss Carew rushed to him and took his head in her arms, gazing at him wildly, and calling to him piteously. The curtain went down, but nothing could be done, and life quickly ebbed. Once, only, his lips moved: 'Your mother—there!—where the play never ends!' and it was over."

"It is like a romance," said Phazma, finally, at the conclusion of this narration.

"Say, rather, reality! The masque is over! In that final sleep Jack Pudding lies with Roscius; the tragedian does not disdain the mummer, and beautiful Columbine, all silver spangles and lace, is company for the clown. 'Tis the only true republic, Phazma; death's Utopia!"

"But to think he should have died with those words of the poet on his lips?"

"A coincidence!" answered Straws. "No more notable than the death of Edmund Kean, who, when he reached the passage 'Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!' fell back unconscious; or that of John Palmer, who, after reciting 'There is another and a better world,' passed away without a pang."

A silence fell between the two poets; around them shadows appeared and vanished. Phazma finished his syrup and arose.

"Don't go," said Straws. "My own thoughts are poor company. Recite some of your madrigals, that's a good fellow! What a wretched night! These rain-drops are like the pattering feet of the invisible host. Some simple song, Phazma!"

"As many as you please!" cried his flattered brother-bard. "What shall it be?"

"One of your Rhymes for Children. Your 'Boy's Kingdom,' beginning:

"When I was young, I dreamed of knights And dames with silken trains."

"Thou shalt have it, mon ami!"

And Phazma gaily caught up the refrain, while Straws beat time to the tinkling measures.

* * * * *

The last entry in the date-book, or diary, of Barnes seems curiously significant as indicating a knowledge that his end was near. For the first time in the volume he rambles on in a reminiscent mood about his boyhood days:

"The first bit of good fortune I ever enjoyed was when as a lad in sweeping a crossing in the neighborhood of the Strand I found a bright, shining sovereign. How tightly I grasped it in my little fist that night when I slept in a doorway! I dared not trust it in my pocket. The next night I walked to the ticket-seller at Drury Lane, and demanded a seat down stairs. 'Gallery seats sold around the corner,' said this imposing gentleman with a prodigious frown, and, abashed, I slunk away. My dream of being near the grand people vanished and I climbed once more to my place directly under the roof.

"My next bit of good fortune happened in this wise. Sheridan, the playwright-orator, attracted my attention on Piccadilly one day, and, for the delight of gazing upon him, I followed. When he stopped, I stopped; when he advanced, I did likewise. I felt that I was treading in the footsteps of a king. Suddenly he paused, wheeled about and confronted me, a raw-boned, ragged, awkward lad of fourteen. 'What one of my creditors has set you following me?' he demanded. 'None, sir,' I stammered. 'I only wanted to look at the author of "The Rivals."' He appeared much amused and said: 'Egad! So you are a patron of the drama, my boy?' I muttered something in the affirmative. He regarded my appearance critically. 'I presume you would not be averse to genteel employment, my lad?' he asked. With that he scribbled a moment and handed me a note to the property man of Drury Lane. My heart was too full; I had no words to thank him. The tears were in my eyes, which, noting, he remarked, with an assumption of sternness: 'Are you sure, boy, you are not a bailiff in disguise?' At this I laughed and he left me. The note procured me an engagement as errand boy at the stage-door and later I rose to the dignity of scene-shifter. How truly typical of this man's greatness, to help lift a homeless lad out of the gutters of London town!

"But I am rambling on as though writing an autobiography, to be read when I am gone—"

Here the entry ceases and the rest of the pages in the old date-book are blank.



CHAPTER V

THE LAWYER'S TIDINGS

The sudden and tragic death of Constance's foster-father—which occurred virtually as narrated by Straws—set a seal of profound sadness on the heart of the young girl. "Good sir, adieu!" she had said in the nunnery scene and the eternal parting had shortly followed. Her affection for the old manager had been that of a loving daughter; the grief she should have experienced over the passing of the marquis was transferred to the memory of one who had been a father through love's kinship. In the far-away past, standing at the bier of her mother, the manager it was who had held her childish hand, consoling her and sharing her affliction, and, in those distant but unforgotten days of trouble, the young girl and the homeless old man became all in all to each other.

Years had rolled by; the child that prattled by his side became the stately girl, but the hand-clasp at that grave had never been relinquished. She could not pretend to mourn the death of the marquis, her own father; had he not ever been dead to her; as dead as the good wife (or bad wife) of that nobleman; as dead as Gross George, and all the other honored and dishonored figures of that misty past? But Barnes' death was the abrupt severing of ties, strengthened by years of tender association, and, when his last summons came, she felt herself truly alone.

In an old cemetery, amid the crumbling bricks, Barnes was buried, his sealed tomb above ground bearing in its inscription the answer to the duke's query: "Thy Best of Life is Sleep." After the manager's death and Constance's retirement from the stage, it naturally followed that the passengers of the chariot became separated. Mrs. Adams continued to play old woman parts throughout the country, remaining springy and buoyant to the last. Susan transferred herself and her talents to another stock company performing in New Orleans, while Kate procured an engagement with a traveling organization. Adonis followed in her train. It had become like second nature to quarrel with Kate, and at the mere prospect of separation, he forthwith was driven to ask her for her hand, and was accepted—on probation, thus departing in leading strings. Hawkes, melancholy as of old, drifted into a comic part in a "variety show," acquiring new laurels as a dry comedian of the old school. But he continued to live alone in the world, mournfully sufficient unto himself.

Constance remained in New Orleans. There the old manager had found his final resting place and she had no definite desire to go elsewhere. Adrift in the darkness of the present, the young girl was too perplexed to plan for the future. So she remained in the house Barnes had rented shortly before his death. An elderly gentlewoman of fallen fortunes, to whom this semi-rural establishment belonged, Constance retained as a companion, passing her time quietly, soberly, almost in solitude. This mansion, last remnant of its owner's earthly estate, was roomy and spacious, nestling among the oranges and inviting seclusion with its pretentious wall surrounding the grounds.

The old-fashioned gentlewoman, poor and proud, was a fitting figure in that ancient house, where in former days gay parties had assembled. But now the principal callers at the old house were the little fat priest, with a rosy smile, who looked after the aged lady's soul, of which she was most solicitous in these later days, and the Count de Propriac, who came ostensibly to see the elderly woman and chat about genealogy and extraction, but was obviously not unmindful of the presence of the young girl nor averse to seeking to mitigate her sorrow. Culver, the lawyer, too, came occasionally, to talk about her affairs, but often her mind turned impatiently from figures and markets to the subtle rhythm of Shakespeare. She regretted having left the stage, feeling the loneliness of this simple existence; yet averse to seeking diversion, and shunning rather than inviting society. As the inert hours crept by, she longed for the forced wakefulness and stir of other days—happy days of insecurity; fleeting, joyous days, gone now beyond recall!

But while she was striving to solve these new problems of her life they were all being settled for her by Fate, that arrogant meddler. Calling one morning, Culver, nosegay in hand, was obliged to wait longer than usual and employed the interval in casually examining his surroundings—and, incidentally, himself. First, with the vanity of youngish old gentlemen, he gazed into a tall mirror, framed in the fantastic style of the early Venetians; a glass which had belonged to the marquis and had erstwhile reflected the light beauty of his noble spouse. Pausing about as long as it would have taken a lady to adjust a curl, he peeped into a Dutch cabinet of ebony and mother-of-pearl and was studying a charming creature painted on ivory, whose head like that of Bluebeard's wife was subsequently separated from her lovely shoulders, when a light footstep behind him interrupted his scrutiny. Turning, he greeted the young girl, and, with stately gallantry, presented the nosegay.

"How well you are looking!" he said. "Though there might be a little more color, perhaps, like some of these flowers. If I were a doctor, I should prescribe: Less cloister; more city!"

She took the flowers, meeting his kindly gaze with a faint smile.

"Most patients would like such prescriptions," he went on. "I should soon become a popular society physician."

But although he spoke lightly, his manner was partly forced and he regarded her furtively. Their brief acquaintance had awakened in him an interest, half-paternal, half-curious. Women were an unknown, but beautiful quantity; from the vantage point of a life of single blessedness, he vaguely, but quixotically placed them in the same category with flowers, and his curiosity was no harsher than that of a gardener studying some new variety of bud or blossom. Therefore he hesitated in what he was about to say, shifting in his chair uneasily when they were seated, but finally coming to the point with:

"Have you read the account of the engagement between the Mexican and the American forces at Vera Cruz?"

"No; not yet," she admitted.

"Nor the list of—of casualties?" he continued, hesitatingly.

"The casualties!" she repeated. "Why—"

"Saint-Prosper has no further interest in the marquis' sous," he said quickly.

She gazed straight before her, calm and composed. This absence of any exhibition of feeling reassured the attorney.

"He is—dead?" she asked quietly.

"Yes."

"How did he die?"

"Gallantly," replied the caller, now convinced she had no interest in the matter, save that of a mere acquaintance. "His death is described in half a column. You see he did not live in vain!"

"Was he—killed in battle?"

"In a skirmish. His company was sent to break up a band of guerilla rancheros at Antigua. They ambushed him; he drove them out of the thicket but fell—You have dropped your flowers. Allow me!—at the head of his men."

"At the head of his men!" She drew in her breath.

"There passed the last of an ill-fated line," said the lawyer, reflectively. "Poor fellow! He started with such bright prospects, graduating from the military college with unusual honors. Ambitious, light-hearted, he went to Africa to carve out a name in the army. But fate was against him. The same ship that took him over carried back, to the marquis, the story of his brother's disgrace—"

"His brother's disgrace!" she exclaimed.

Culver nodded. "He sold a French stronghold in Africa, Miss Carew."

Had the attorney been closely observing her he would have noticed the sudden look of bewilderment that crossed her face. She stared at him with her soul in her eyes.

"Ernest Saint-Prosper's—brother?"

The turmoil of her thoughts held her as by a spell; in the disruption of a fixed conclusion her brain was filled with new and poignant reflections. Unconsciously she placed a nervous hand upon his arm.

"Then Ernest Saint-Prosper who was—killed in Mexico was not the traitor?"

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Culver, quickly, "Owing to the disgrace, I am sure, more than to any other reason, he bade farewell to his country—and now lies unmourned in some mountain ravine. It is true the marquis quarreled with him, disliking not a little the young man's republican ideas, but—my dear young lady!—you are ill?"

"No, no!" she returned, hastily, striving to maintain her self-possession. "How—do you know this?"

"Through the marquis, himself," he replied, somewhat uneasy beneath her steady gaze. "He told me the story in order to protect the estate from any possible pretensions on the part of the traitor. The renegade was reported dead, but the marquis, nevertheless remained skeptical. He did not believe in the old saw about the devil being dead. 'Le diable lives always,' he said."

The visitor observed a perceptible change in the young girl, just what he could not define, but to him it seemed mostly to lie in her eyes where something that baffled him looked out and met his glance.

"His brother was an officer in the French army?" she asked, as though forcing herself to speak.

"Yes; ten years older than Ernest Saint-Prosper, he had already made a career for himself. How eagerly, then, must the younger brother have looked forward to meeting him; to serving with one who, in his young eyes, was all that was brave and noble! What a bitter awakening from the dream! It is not those we hate who can injure us most—only those we love can stab us so deeply!"

Mechanically she answered the lawyer, and, when he prepared to leave, the hand, given him at parting, was as cold as ice.

"Remember," he said, admonishingly; "less cloister, more city!"

Some hours later, the old lady, dressed in her heavy silk and brocade and with snow-white hair done up in imposing fashion, rapped on Constance's door, but received no answer. Knocking again, with like result, she entered the room, discovering the young girl on the bed, her cheeks tinted like the rose, her eyes with no gleam of recognition in them, and her lips moving, uttering snatches of old plays. Taking her hand, the old lady found it hot and dry.

"Bless me!" she exclaimed. "She is down with a fever." And at once prepared a simple remedy which soon silenced the babbling lips in slumber, after which she sent for the doctor.



CHAPTER VI

THE COUNCIL OF WAR

"Adjutant, tell Colonel Saint-Prosper I wish to see him."

The adjutant saluted and turned on his heel, while General Scott bent over the papers before him, studying a number of rough pencil tracings. Absorbed in his task, the light of two candles on the table brought into relief, against the dark shadows, a face of rugged character and marked determination. Save for a slight contraction of the brow, he gave no evidence of the mental concentration he bestowed upon the matter in hand, which was to lead to the culmination of the struggle and to vindicate the wisdom and boldness of his policy.

"You sent for me, General?"

An erect, martial figure stood respectfully at the entrance of the tent.

"Yes," said the General, pushing the papers from him. "I have been studying your drawings of the defensive works at San Antonio Garita and find them entirely comprehensive. A council of officers has been called, and perhaps it will be as well for you to remain."

"At what time shall I be here, General?"

"It is about time now," answered the commander-in-chief, consulting his watch. "You have quite recovered from your wounds?" he added, kindly.

"Yes, thank you, General."

"I see by the newspapers you were reported dead. If your friends read that it will cause them needless anxiety. You had better see that the matter is corrected."

"It is hardly worth while," returned the young man, slowly.

The commanding general glanced at him in some surprise. "A strange fellow!" he thought. "Has he reasons for wishing to be considered dead? However, that is none of my business. At any rate, he is a good soldier." And, after a moment, he continued: "Cerro Gordo was warm work, but there is warmer yet in store for us. Only Providence, not the Mexicans, can stop us. But here are the officers," as General Pillow, Brevet-General Twiggs and a number of other officers entered.

The commander-in-chief proceeded to give such information as he had, touching the approaches to the city. Many of the officers favored operating against San Antonio Garita, others attacking Chapultepec. Saint-Prosper, when called on, stated that the ground before the San Antonio gate was intersected by many irrigating ditches and that much of the approach was under water.

"Then you would prefer storming a fortress to taking a ditch?" said one of the generals, satirically.

"A series of ditches," replied the other.

"Colonel Saint-Prosper is right," exclaimed the commanding general. "I had already made up my mind. Let it be the western gate, then."

And thus was brought to a close one of the most memorable councils of war, for it determined the fate of the City of Mexico.

Saint-Prosper looked older than when seen in New Orleans, as though he had endured much in that brief but hard campaign. His wound had incapacitated him for only a few months, and in spite of the climate and a woful lack of medical attendance and nourishing supplies, his hardy constitution stood him in such stead he was on his feet and in the saddle, while his comrades languished and died in the fierce heat of the temporary hospitals. His fellow-officers knew him as a fearless soldier, but a man reticent about himself, who made a confidant of no one. Liked for his ready, broad military qualities, it was a matter of comment, nevertheless, that no one knew anything about him except that he had served in the French army and was highly esteemed by General Scott as a daring and proficient engineer.

One evening shortly before the skirmish of Antigua, a small Mexican town had been ransacked, where were found cattle, bales of tobacco, pulque and wine. At the rare feast which followed a veteran drank to his wife; a young man toasted his sweetheart, and a third, with moist eyes, sang the praises of his mother. In the heart of the enemy's land, amid the uncertainties of war, remembrance carried them back to their native soil, rugged New England, the hills of Vermont, the prairies of Illinois, the blue grass of Kentucky.

"Saint-Prosper!" they cried, calling on him, when the festivities were at their height.

"To you, gentlemen," he replied, rising, glass in hand. "I drink to your loved ones!"

"To your own!" cried a young man, flushed with the wine.

Saint-Prosper gazed around that rough company, brave hearts softened to tenderness, and, lifting his canteen, said, after a moment's hesitation:

"To a princess on a tattered throne!"

They looked at him in surprise. Who was this adventurer who toasted princesses? The Mexican war had brought many soldiers of fortune and titled gentlemen from Europe to the new world, men who took up the cause more to be fighting than that they cared what the struggle was about. Was the "tattered throne" Louis Philippe's chair of state, torn by the mob in the Tuileries? And what foreign princess was the lady of the throne? But they took up the refrain promptly, good-naturedly, and a chorus rolled out:

"To the princess!"

Little they knew she was but a poor stroller; an "impudent, unwomanish, graceless monster," according to Master Prynne.

After leaving the commanding general's tent, Saint-Prosper retired to rest in that wilderness which had once been a monarch's pleasure grounds. Now overhead the mighty cypresses whispered their tales of ancient glory and faded renown; the wind waved those trailing beards, hoary with age; a gathering of venerable giants, murmuring the days when the Aztec monarch had once held courtly revels under the grateful shadows of their branches. The moaning breeze seemed the wild chant of the Indian priest in honor of the war-god of Anahuac. It told of battles to come and conflicts which would level to the dust the descendants of the conquerors of that ill-starred country. And so the soldier finally fell asleep, with that requiem ringing in his ears.

When daybreak again penetrated the mountain recesses and fell upon the valley, Saint-Prosper arose to shake off a troubled slumber. An unhealthy mist hung over the earth, like a miasma, and the officer shivered as he walked in that depressing and noxious atmosphere. It lay like a deleterious veil before the glades where myrtles mingled with the wild limes. It concealed from view a cross, said to have been planted by Cortez—the cross he worshiped because of its resemblance to the hilt of a sword!—and enveloped the hoary trees that were old when Montezuma was a boy or when Marina was beloved by the mighty free-booter.

The shade resting on the valley appeared that of a mighty, virulent hand. Out of the depths arose a flock of dark-hued birds, soaring toward the morbific fog; not moving like other winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the "dark valley," as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again hovering in mid air. Suddenly the uncanny birds vanished among the trees as quickly as they had arisen, and there was something mysterious about their unwarranted disappearance and the abrupt cessation of clamorous cries.

While viewing this somber scene, Saint-Prosper had made his way to a little adobe house which the natives had built near the trail that led through the valley. As he approached this hut he encountered a dismal but loquacious sentinel, tramping before the partly opened door.

"This is chilly work, guard?" said the young man, pausing.

"Yis, Colonel," replied the soldier, apparently grateful for the interruption; "it's a hot foight I prefer to this cool dooty."

"Whom are you guarding?" continued the officer.

"A spy, taken in the lines a few days ago. He's to be executed this morning at six. But I don't think he will moind that, for it's out of his head he is, with the malaria."

"He should have had medical attendance," observed the officer, stepping to the door.

"Faith, they'll cure him at daybreak," replied the guard. "It's a medicine that niver fails."

Saint-Prosper pushed open the door. The interior was so dim that at first he could not distinguish the occupant, but when his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he discovered the figure of the prisoner, who was lying with his back toward him on the ground of the little hut with nothing but a thin blanket beneath him. The only light revealing the barren details of this Indian residence sifted through the small doorway or peered timorously down through a narrow aperture in the roof that served for a chimney. As Saint-Prosper gazed at the prostrate man, the latter moved uneasily, and from the parched lips fell a few words:

"Lock the doors, Oly-koeks! Hear the songsters, Mynheer Ten Breecheses! Birds of prey, you Dutch varlet! What do you think of the mistress of the manor? The serenading anti-renters have come for her." Then he repeated more slowly: "The squaw Pewasch! For seventeen and one-half ells of duffels! A rare principality for the scornful minx! Lord! how the birds sing now around the manor—screech owls, cat-birds, bobolinks!"

The soldier started back, vivid memories assailing his mind. Who was this man whose brain, independent of the corporeal shell, played waywardly with scenes, characters and events, indissolubly associated with his own life?

"Do you know, Little Thunder, the Lord only rebuked the Pharisees?" continued the prostrate man. "Though the Pharisee triumphs after all! But it was the stroller I wanted, not the principality."

He stirred quickly, as if suddenly aware of the presence of another in the hut, and, turning, lifted his head in a startled manner, surveying the figure near the doorway with conflicting emotions written on his pallid countenance. Perhaps some fragment of a dream yet lingered in his brain; perhaps he was confused at the sight of a face that met his excited look with one of doubt and bewilderment, but only partial realization of the identity of the intruder came to him in his fevered condition.

Arising deliberately, his body, like a machine, obeying automatically some unconscious power, he confronted the officer, who recognized in him, despite his thin, worn face and eyes, unnaturally bright, the once pretentious land baron, Edward Mauville. Moving toward the door, gazing on Saint-Prosper as though he was one of the figures of a disturbing phantasm, he reached the threshold, and, lifting his hand above his head, the prisoner placed it against one of the supports of the hut and stood leaning there. From the creation of his mind's eye, as he doubtlessly, half-conscious of his weakness, designated the familiar form, he glanced at the sentinel and shook as though abruptly conscious of his situation. Across the valley the soldiers showed signs of bestirring themselves, the smoke of many fires hovering earthward beneath the mist. Drawing his thin frame proudly to its full height, with a gesture of disdain for physical weakness, and setting his keen, wild eyes upon the soldier, Mauville said in a hollow tone:

"Is that really you, Mr. Saint-Prosper? At first I thought you but a trick of the imagination. Well, look your fill upon me! You are my Nemesis come to see the end."

"I am here by chance, Edward Mauville; an officer in the American army!"

"And I, a spy in the Mexican army. So are we authorized foes."

Rubbing his trembling hands together, his eyes shifted from the dark birds to the mists, then from the phantom forests back to the hut, finally resting on his shabby boots of yellow leather. The sunlight penetrating a rift in the mist settled upon him as he moved feebly and uncertainly through the doorway and seated himself upon a stool. This sudden glow brought into relief his ragged, unkempt condition, the sallowness of his face, and his wasted form, and Saint-Prosper could not but contrast pityingly this cheerless object, in the garb of a ranchero, with the prepossessing, sportive heir who had driven through the Shadengo Valley.

Apparently now the sun was grateful to his bent, stricken figure, and, basking in it, he recalled his distress of the previous night:

"This is better. Not long ago I awoke with chattering teeth. 'This,' I said, 'is life; a miasma, cold, discomfort,' Yes, yes; a fever, a miasma, with phantoms fighting you—struggling to choke you—but now"—he paused, and fumbling in his pocket, drew out a cigarette case, which he opened, but found empty. A cigar the other handed him he took mechanically and lighted with scrupulous care. Near at hand the guard, more cheerful under the prospect of speedy relief from his duties, could be heard humming to himself:

"Oh, Teady-foley, you are my darling, You are my looking-glass night and morning—"

Watching the smoker, Saint-Prosper asked himself how came Mauville to be serving against his own country, or why he should have enlisted at all, this pleasure-seeking man of the world, to whom the hardships of a campaign must have been as novel as distasteful.

"Are you satisfied with your trial?" said the soldier at length.

"Yes," returned Mauville, as if breaking from a reverie. "I confess I am the secret agent of Santa Anna and would have carried information from your lines. I am here because there is more of the Latin than the Anglo-Saxon in me. Many of the old families"—with a touch of insane pride—"did not regard the purchase of Louisiana by the United States as a transaction alienating them from other ties. Fealty is not a commercial commodity. But this," he added, scornfully, "is something you can not understand. You soldiers of fortune draw your swords for any master who pays you."

The wind moaned down the mountain side, and the slender trees swayed and bent; only the heavy and ponderous cactus remained motionless, a formidable monarch receiving obeisance from supple courtiers. Like cymbals, the leaves clashed around this armament of power with its thousand spears out-thrust in all directions.

The ash fell from the cigar as Mauville held the weed before his eyes.

"It is an hour-glass," he muttered. "When smoked—Oh, for the power of Jupiter to order four nights in one, the better to pursue his love follies! Love follies," he repeated, and, as a new train of fancy was awakened, he regarded Saint-Prosper venomously.

"Do you know she is the daughter of a marquis?" said Mauville, suddenly.

"Who?" asked the soldier.

"The stroller, of course. You can never win her," he added, contemptuously. "She knows all about that African affair."

Saint-Prosper started violently, but in a moment Mauville's expression changed, and he appeared plunged in thought.

"The last time I saw her," he said, half to himself, "she was dressed in black—her face as noonday—her hair black as midnight—crowning her with languorous allurement!"

He repeated the last word several times like a man in a dream.

"Allurement! allurement!" and again relapsed into a silence that was half-stupor.

By this time the valley, with the growing of the day, began to lose much of its evil aspect, and the eye, tempted through glades and vistas, lingered upon gorgeous forms of inflorescence. The land baron slowly blew a wreath of smoke in the air—a circle, mute reminder of eternity!—and threw the end of the cigar into the bushes. Looking long and earnestly at the surrounding scene, he started involuntarily. "The dark valley—whar de mists am risin'—I see yo' da, honey—fo'ebber and fo'ebber—"

As he surveyed this prospect, with these words ringing in his ears, the brief silence was broken by a bugle call and the trampling of feet.

"The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise," said the prisoner, turning and facing the soldiers calmly. "You have come for me?" he asked, quietly.

"Yes," said the officer in command. "General Scott has granted your request in view of certain circumstances, and you will be shot, instead of hanged."

The face of the prisoner lighted wonderfully. He drew himself erect and smiled with some of the assumption of the old insolence, that expression Saint-Prosper so well remembered! His features took on a semblance to the careless, dashing look they had borne when the soldier crossed weapons with him at the Oaks, and he neither asked nor intended to give quarter.

"I thank you," he observed, courteously. "At least, I shall die like a gentleman. I am ready, sir! Do not fasten my hands. A Mauville can die without being tied or bound."

The officer hesitated: "As to that—" he began.

"It is a reasonable request," said Saint-Prosper, in a low tone.

Mauville abruptly wheeled; his face, dark and sinister, was lighted with envenomed malignity; an unnaturally clear perception replaced the stupor of his brain, and, bending toward Saint-Prosper, his eye rested upon him with such rancor and malevolence the soldier involuntarily drew away. But one word fell from the land baron's lips, low, vibrating, full of inexpressible bitterness. "Traitor!"

"Come, come!" interrupted the officer in command of the execution party; "time is up. As I was told not to fasten your hands, you shall have your wish. Confess now, that is accommodating?"

"Thanks," returned Mauville carelessly, relapsing into his old manner. "You are an obliging fellow! I would do as much for you."

"Not much danger of that," growled the other. "But we'll take the will for the deed. Forward, march!"

* * * * *

After the reverberations, carried from rock to rock with menacing reiteration, had ceased, the stillness was absolute. Even the song-bird remained frightened into silence by those awful echoes. Then the sun rested like a benediction on the land and the white cross of Cortez was distinctly outlined against the blue sky. But soon the long roll of drums followed this interval of quiet.

"Fall in!" "Attention; shoulder arms!" And the sleeping spirit of the Aztec war-god floated in the murmur which, increasing in volume, arose to tumultuous shout.

"On to Chapultepec! On to Chapultepec!" came from a thousand throats; arms glistened in the sun, bugles sounded resonant in the air, and the pattering noise of horses' hoofs mingled with the stentorian voices of the rough teamsters and the cracking of the whips. Like an irresistible, all-compelling wave, the troops swept out of the valley to hurl themselves against castle and fortress and to plant their colors in the heart of the capital city.



CHAPTER VII

A MEETING ON THE MOUNT

Clothed at its base in a misty raiment of purple, the royal hill lifted above the valley an Olympian crest of porphyritic rock into the fathomless blue. Here not Jupiter and his court looked serenely down upon the struggling race, "indifferent from their awful height," but a dark-hued god, in Aztec vestments, gazed beyond the meadows to the floating flower beds, the gardens with their baths, and the sensuous dancing girls. All this, but a panorama between naps, soon faded away; the god yawned, drew his cloak of humming bird feathers more closely about him and sank back to rest. An uproar then disturbed his paleozoic dreams; like fluttering spirits of the garish past, the butterflies arose in the forest glades; and the voices of old seemed to chant the Aztec psalm: "The horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and the dark shadows of death the brilliant lights for the stars." Even so they had chanted when the early free-booters burst upon the scene and beheld the valley with its frame-work of mountains and two guardian volcanoes, the Gog and Magog of the table-land.

Now again, from the towering column of Montezuma's cypress, to the city marked by spires, the thunder rolled and echoed onward even to the pine-clad cliffs and snow-crowned summits of the rocky giants. Puffs of smoke dotted the valley beneath the mount, and, as the answering reports reverberated across space, nature's mortars in the inclosure of mountains sent forth threatening wreaths of white in sympathy with the eight-inch howitzers and sixteen-pounders turned upon the crest of the royal hill.

When the trees were yet wet with their bath of dew the booming of artillery and the clattering of small arms dispelled that peace which partook of no harsher discord than the purling of streams and the still, small voices of the forest. Through the groves where the spirit of Donna Marina—the lost love of the marauder—was said to wander, shrieked the round shot, shells and grape. Through tangled shrubberies, bright with flowers and colored berries, pierced the discharge of canister; the air, fragrant at the dawn with orange blossom and starry jessamine, was noisome with suffocating, sulphurous fumes, and, beneath the fetid shroud, figures in a fog heedlessly trampled the lilies, the red roses and "flowers of the heart."

From the castle on the summit—mortal trespass upon the immortal pale of the gods!—the upward shower was answered by an iron downpour, and two storming parties, with ladders, pick-axes and crows, advanced, one on each side of the hill, to the attack. Boom! boom! before one of the parties, climbing and scrambling to the peak, belched the iron missives of destruction from the concealed mouths of heavy guns, followed by the rattling shower from small arms.

Surprised, they paused, panting from the swift ascent, some throwing themselves prone upon the earth, while the grape and canister passed harmlessly over them, others seeking such shelter as rocks, trees and shrubs afforded. Here and there a man fell, but was not suffered to lie long exposed to the fire of the redoubt which, strongly manned, held them in check midway to the summit. Doggedly their comrades rescued the wounded and quickly conveyed them to the rear.

"They've set out their watch-dogs," remarked the general commanding the assault on that side of the hill, to one of his officers, as he critically surveyed the formidable defense through the tangled shrubbery. "Here is a battery we hadn't reckoned on."

"It was to be expected, sir," responded the officer. "They were sure to have some strong point we couldn't locate."

"Yes," grumbled the general; "in such a jumble of foliage and rocks it would take an eagle's eye to pick out all their miserable ambuscades."

"I have no doubt, sir, the men are rested now," ventured the other.

"No doubt they are," chuckled the general, still studying the situation, glancing to the right and the left of the redoubt. "The more fighting they get the more they want. They are not so band-boxy as they were, but remind me of an old, mongrel dog I once owned. He wasn't much to look at—but I'll tell you the story later." A sudden quick decision appearing on his face. Evidently the working of his mind had been foreign to his words.

"Saint-Prosper," he said, "I suppose the boys on the other side are going up all the time? I promised our troops the honor of pulling down that flag. I'm a man of my word; go ahead and take the batteries and"—stroking his long gray goatee—"beat Pillow to the top."

A word; a command; they rushed forward; not a laggard in the ranks; not a man who shirked the leaden shower; not one who failed to offer his breast openly and fearlessly to the red death which to them might come when it would. Unwaveringly over rocks, chasms and mines, they followed the tall figure of their leader; death underfoot, death overhead! What would courage avail against concealed mines? Yet like a pack of hounds that reck naught while the scent is warm, they pressed forward, ever forward; across the level opening, where some dropped out of the race, and over the ramparts! A brief struggle; confusion, turmoil; something fearful occurring that no eye could see in its entirety through the smoke; afterwards, a great shout that announced to the palace on the mount the fate of the intermediary batteries!

But there was sharper and more arduous work to come; this, merely a foretaste of the last, fierce stand of the besieged; a stand in which they knew they were fighting for everything, where defeat meant the second conquest of Mexico! From the batteries the assailants had captured to the foot of the castle seemed but a little way to them in their zeal; no one thought of weariness, or the toil of the ascent. But one determination possessed them—to end it all quickly; to carry everything before them! Their victory at the redoubt gave them such sudden, wild confidence that castles seemed no more than ant-hills—to be trampled on! Instinctively every man felt sure of the day and already experienced the glory of conquering that historic hill; that invincible fortress! Over the great valley, so beautiful in its physical features, so inspiring in its associations, should hang the stars of the North, with the stars of heaven!

The scaling ladders were brought up and planted by the storming party; the first to mount were hurled back, killed or wounded, to the rocks below, but others took their places; a lodgment was effected, and, like the water bursting over a dike, a tide of besiegers found ingress.

Under a galling fire, with shouts that rang above the noise of rifles, they drove the masses of the enemy from their guns; all save one, not a Mexican from his fair skin, who stood confidently beside his piece, an ancient machine, made of copper and strengthened by bands of iron. A handsome face; dead to morality, alive to pleasure; the face of a man past thirty, the expression of immortal one-and-twenty! A figure from the pages of Ovid, metamorphosed to a gunner of Santa Anna! The bright radiance from a cloudless sky, the smoke having drifted westward from the summit, fell upon him and his gun.

With inscrutable calmness, one hand fondling the breech, he regarded the fleeting figures and the hoarse-throated pursuers; then, as if to time the opportunity to the moment, he bent over the gun.

"I wonder if this first-born can still bark!" he muttered.

But an instant's hesitation, friend and foe being fairly intermingled, was fatal to his purpose; the venerable culverin remained silent, and the gunner met hand-to-hand a figure that sprang from the incoming host. Simultaneously the rapid firing of a new wave of besiegers from the other side of the castle threw once more a pall of smoke over the scene, and, beneath its mantle, the two men were like figures struggling in a fog, feeling rather than seeing each other's blade, divining by touch the cut, pass or aggressive thrust.

"Faugh!" laughed the gunner. "They'll kill us with smoke."

The discharge of small arms gradually ceased; the fresh breeze again cleared the crest of the mount, showing the white walls of the structure which had been so obstinately defended; the valley, where the batteries now lay silent, having spoken their thundering prologue, and the alien flag, the regimental colors of the invaders, floating from the upper walls. Below on the road toward the city, a band of white across the table land, successive spots of smoke momentarily appeared and were succeeded, after a considerable interval, by the rub-a-dub of rifles. From the disenchanting distance the charge of a body of men, in the attempt to dislodge a party entrenched in a ditch, lost the tragic aspect of warfare, and the soldiers who fell seemed no larger than the toy figures of a nursery game.

With the brightening of the summit to the light of day, eagerly the two combatants near the copper gun gazed for the first time into each other's eyes, and, at that trenchant glance, a tremor crossed the features of the gunner, and his arm, with its muscles of steel, suddenly became inert, powerless.

"Mon Dieu!—'Tis Ernest—little Ernest!" he exclaimed, wonderingly.

For all that his opponent's sword, ominously red from the fierce first assault at the wall, was at his breast, he made no effort to oppose its threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, passing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose and fell with labored breathing, it was with an almost quizzical glance he regarded the other who stood as if turned to stone.

"That was not so easily done, Ernest," he said, not unkindly, "but surprise broke down my guard."

"Before God, it was not I!" cried the soldier, starting from a trance.

"And if it were!" With his free arm he felt his shoulder. "I believe you are right," he observed, coolly. "Swords break no bones."

"I will get a surgeon," said the other, as he turned.

"What for? To shake his head? Get no one, or if—for boyish days!—you want to serve me, lend me your canteen."

Saint-Prosper held it to his lips, and he drank thirstily.

"That was a draught in an oasis. I had the desert in my throat—the desert, the wild desert! What a place to meet! But they caught Abd-el-Kader, and there was nothing for it but to flee! Besides, I am a rolling stone."

To hear him who had betrayed his country and shed the blood of his comrades, characterize himself by no harsher term was an amazing revelation of the man's character.

The space around them had become almost deserted; here and there lay figures on the ground among which might be distinguished a sub-lieutenant and other students of the military college, the castle having been both academy and garrison. Their tuition barely over, so early had they given up their lives beneath the classic walls of their alma mater! The exhilarating cheering and shouting had subsided; the sad after-flavor succeeded the lust of conquest.

"Yes," continued the gunner, though the words came with an effort. "First, it was the desert. What a place to roll and rove! I couldn't help it for the life of me! When I was a boy I ran away from school; a lad, I ran away from college! If I had been a sailor I would have deserted the ship. After they captured the prophet, I deserted the desert. So, hey for Mexico, a hilly place for a rolling stone!"

He gasped, held his hand to his shoulder and brought it away covered with red. But that Saint-Prosper knelt swiftly, sustaining and supporting him, he would have slid to the ground. He smiled—sweetly enough—on the stern soldier and placed his moist and stained hand caressingly on that of his companion. Seeing them thus, it was not difficult to trace a family likeness—a similarity in their very dissimilarity. The older was younger; the younger, older. The gunner's hair was light, his face wild as a gerfalcon beneath; the other's dark, with a countenance, habitually repressed, but now, at the touch of that dishonored hand, grown cold and harsh; yet despite the total difference of expression, the hereditary resemblance could not be stamped out. Even the smile of the wounded man was singularly like that of his brother—a rare transformation that seldom failed to charm.

"That's my story," he said, smiling now, as though all the problems of life and death could be thus dismissed. "As the prophet said: 'I have urged my camel through every desert!' You see I know my Koran well. But how came you here, Ernest? I thought you were in Africa, colonizing—us!"

"It was impossible to stay there long," replied Saint-Prosper, slowly.

"There's that cloud of smoke again," muttered the wounded man, apparently oblivious to the other's response. As he spoke he withdrew his hand from that of his brother. At that moment the tropic sun was bathing him in its light and the white walls shone with luster. "No; it's like the desert; the dark hour before the sand-storm." Upon his brow the perspiration gathered, but his lip curled half-scornfully, half-defiantly. "Turn me toward the valley, Ernest. There's more space; more light!"

The soldier, an automaton in passive compliance, placed him where he commanded the outlook cityward; the open plain, protected by the breast-works of mountains; the distant spires trembling on the horizon; the lakes which once marked the Western Venice, a city of perfume and song. Striking a body of water, the sun converted it into a glowing shield, a silver escutcheon of the land of silver, and, in contrast with this polished splendor, the shadows, trailing on the far-away mountains, were soft, deep and velvety. But the freedom of the outlook afforded the wounded man little comfort.

"The storm!" he said.

A change passed over his face, as of a shadow drawn before it. He groped helplessly with his hand.

"Feel in my burnoose, Ernest. A bag—around my neck—open it!"

Saint-Prosper thrust his hand within the coat, shuddering at the contact with the ebbing life's blood, and drew forth a leather bag which he placed in the other's trembling fingers. With an effort, breathing laboriously, and staring hard, as though striving to penetrate a gathering film, the wounded man finally managed to display the contents of the bag, emptying them in his palm, where they glinted and gleamed in the sun's rays. Sapphires, of delicate blue; emeralds with vitreous luster; opals of brilliant iridescence—but, above all, a ruby of perfect color and extraordinary size, cut en cabachon, and exhibiting a marvelous star of many rays; the ruby of Abd-el-Kader!

With a venal expression of delight, the gunner regarded the contents of the bag, feeling the gems one by one. "The rarest stone—from the Sagyin hills, Ernest!" he whispered, as his trembling fingers played with the ruby.

But even as he fondled it, a great pain crossed his breast; he gripped his shoulder tight with his free hand, clutching the precious stones hard in his clenched fist. Thus he remained, how long the other never knew, panting, growing paler, as the veins that carried life to his heart were being slowly emptied.

His head dropped. "How dark!" he murmured. "Like a m'chacha where the hashish-smokers dream!"

The younger brother thought his energy was spent when he looked up sharply.

"The lamp's out, you Devil Jew!" he cried. "The pipe, too—spawn of hell!"

And he dropped back like stone, the gems falling from his hand, which twitched spasmodically on the ground and then was still. Saint-Prosper bent over him, but the heart, famished for nourishment, had ceased to beat; the restless, wayward soul had fled from its tabernacle of dust. Save for the stain on his breast and the fixedness of his eyes, he might have been sleeping.

Mechanically the soldier gathered the sapphires, emeralds and other gems—flashing testimony of that thankless past—and, leaning against the wall, gazed afar to the snow-capped volcanoes. Even as he looked, the vapors arose from the solfataras of the "smoking mountain" and a vast shower of cinders and stones was thrown into the air. Unnoticed passed the eruption before the gaze of Saint-Prosper, whose mind in a torpor swept dully back to youth's roseate season, recalling the homage of the younger for the elder brother, a worship as natural as pagan adoration of the sun. From the sanguine fore-time to the dead present lay a bridge of darkness. With honor within grasp, deliberately he had sought dishonor, little recking of shame and murder, and childishly husbanding green, red and blue pebbles!

Weighing the stones in his hand now, Ernest Saint-Prosper looked at them long and bitterly. For these the honor and pride of an old family had been sold. For these he himself had endured the reflected disgrace; isolation from comradeship; distrust which had blighted his military career at the outset. How different had been the reality from his expectations; the buoyant hopes of youth; the fond anticipation of glory, succeeded by stigma and stain! And, as the miserable, perplexing panorama of these later years pictured itself in his brain he threw, with a sudden gesture, the gems far from him, over the wall, out toward the valley!

Like dancing beams of color, they flashed a moment in mid air; then mingled their hues with the rainbow tints of a falling stream. Lost to sight, they sank in the crystal waters which leaped with a caressing murmur toward the table-land; only the tiny spectrum, vivid reminder of their color, still waved and wavered from rock to rock above a pellucid pool.

"I beg your pardon, Colonel," said a voice at his elbow, breaking in upon his reflections; "are you wounded?"

With drawn features, the officer turned.

"No; I am not wounded."

"The general directs you to take this message to the commanding general," continued the little aide. "I believe I may congratulate you, sir, for you will have the honor of bearing the news of the victory." He handed Saint-Prosper a sealed message. "It's been a glorious day, sir, but"—gazing carelessly around him—"has cost many a brave life!"

"Yes, many a life!" answered the other, placing the message in his breast and steadfastly regarding for the last time the figure beneath the gun.

"We ought to be in the City of Mexico in a day or two, sir," resumed the aide. "Won't it be jolly though, after forced marches and all that sort of thing! Fandangos; tambourines; cymbals! And the pulque! What creatures of the moment we are, sir!" he added, with sudden thoughtfulness. "'Twill be, after all, like dancing over the graves of our dear comrades!"



CHAPTER VIII

A FAIR PENITENT

The reception to General Zachary Taylor, on his return from Mexico, and the inauguration of the carnival combined to the observance of a dual festival day in the Crescent City. Up the river, past the rice fields, disturbing the ducks and pelicans, ploughed the noisy craft bearing "Old Rough and Ready" to the open port of the merry-making town. When near the barracks, the welcoming cannon boomed, and the affrighted darkies on the remote plantations shook with dire forebodings of a Mexican invasion.

The boat rounded at the Place d'Armes, where, beneath a triumphal arch, General Taylor received the crown and chaplet of the people—popular applause—and a salvo of eloquence from the mayor. With flying colors and nourish of trumpets, a procession of civic and military bodies was then formed, the parade finally halting at the St. Charles, where the fatted calf had been killed and the succulent ox roasted. Sounding a retreat, the veteran commander fell back upon a private parlor to recuperate his forces in anticipation of the forthcoming banquet.

From this stronghold, where, however, not all of the enemy—his friends—could be excluded, there escaped an officer, with: "I'll look around town a little, General."

"Look around!" said the commander at the door. "I should think we had looked around! Well, don't fall foul of too many juleps."

With a laughing response, the young man pushed his way through the jostling crowd near the door, traversed the animated corridor, and soon found himself out on the busy street. Amid the variegated colors and motley throng, he walked, not, however, in King Carnival's gay domains, but in a city of recollections. The tavern he had just left was associated with an unforgotten presence; the stores, the windows, the thoroughfares themselves were fraught with retrospective suggestion of the strollers.

Even now—and he came to an abrupt standstill—he was staring at the bill-board of the theater where she had played, the familiar entrance bedecked with bunting and festival inscriptions. Before its classic portals appeared the black-letter announcement of an act by "Impecunious Jordan, Ethiopian artist, followed by a Tableau of General Scott's Capture of the City of Mexico." Mechanically he stepped within and approached the box office. From the little cupboard, a strange face looked forth; even the ticket vender of old had been swallowed up by the irony of fate, and, instead of the well-remembered blond mustache of the erstwhile seller of seats, a dark-bearded man, with sallow complexion, inquired:

"How many?"

"One," said Saint-Prosper, depositing a Mexican piece on the counter before the cubby-hole.

"We've taken in plenty of this kind of money to-day," remarked the man, holding up the coin. "I reckon you come to town with old Zach?"

"Yes." The soldier was about to turn away, when he changed his mind and observed: "You used to give legitimate drama here."

"That was some time ago," said the man in the box, reflectively. "The soldiers like vaudeville. Ever hear Impecunious Jordan?"

"I never did."

"Then you've got a treat," continued the vender. "He's the best in his line. Hope you'll enjoy it, sir," he concluded, with the courtesy displayed toward one and all of "Old Rough and Ready's" men that day. "It's the best seat left in the house. You come a little late, you know." And as the other moved away:

"How different they look before and after! They went to Mexico fresh as daisies, and come back—those that do—dead beat, done up!"



Passing through the door, Saint-Prosper was ushered to his seat in a renovated auditorium; new curtain, re-decorated stalls, mirrors and gilt in profusion; the old restfulness gone, replaced by glitter and show. Amid changed conditions, the derangement of fixed external form and outline, the sight of a broad face in the orchestra and the aspect of a colossal form riveted his attention. This person was neither stouter nor thinner than before; he perspired neither more nor less; he was neither older nor younger—seemingly; he played on his instrument neither better nor worse. Youth might fade, honors take wing, the face of nature change, but Hans, Gargantuan Hans, appeared but a figure in an eternal present! Gazing at that substantial landmark, the soldier was carried back in thought over the long period of separation to a forest idyl; a face in the firelight; the song of the katydid; the drumming of the woodpecker. Dreams; vain dreams! They had assailed him before, but seldom so sharply as now in a place consecrated to the past.

"Look out for the dandies, Girls, beware; Look out for their blandishments, Dears, take care! For they're always ready—remember this!— To pilfer from maids an unwilling kiss. Oh, me! Oh, my! There! There!" (Imaginary slaps.)

sang and gesticulated a lady in abbreviated skirts and low-cut dress, winking and blinking in ironical shyness, and concluding with a flaunting of her gown, a toe pointed ceilingward, and a lively "breakdown." Then she vanished with a hop, skip and a bow, reappeared with a ravishing smile and threw a generous assortment of kisses among the audience, and disappeared with another hop, skip and a bow, as Impecunious Jordan burst upon the spectators from the opposite side of the stage.

Even the sight of Hans, a finger-post pointing to ways long since traversed, could not reconcile the soldier to his surroundings; the humor of the burnt-cork artist seemed inappropriate to the place; his grotesque dancing inadmissible in that atmosphere once consecrated to the comedy of manners and the stately march of the classic drama. Where Hamlet had moralized, a loutish clown now beguiled the time with some tom-foolery, his wit so broad, his quips were cannon-balls, and his audience, for the most part soldiers from Mexico, open-mouthed swallowed the entire bombardment. But Saint-Prosper, finding the performance dull, finally rose and went out, not waiting for the thrilling Tableaux of the Entrance into the City of Mexico of a hundred American troops (impersonated by young ladies in tropical attire) and the submission of Santa Anna's forces (more young ladies) by sinking gracefully to their bended knees.

Fun and frolic were now in full swing on the thoroughfares; Democritus, the rollicker, had commanded his subjects to drive dull care away and they obeyed the jovial lord of laughter. Animal spirits ran high; mischief beguiled the time; mummery romped and rioted. Marshaled by disorder, armed with drollery and divers-hued banners, they marched to the Castle of Chaos, where the wise are fools, the old are young and topsy-turvy is the order of the day.

As Saint-Prosper stood watching the versicolored concourse swarm by, a sudden rush of bystanders to view Faith on a golden pedestal, looking more like Coquetry, propelled a dainty figure against the soldier. Involuntarily he put out his arm which girded a slender waist; Faith drove simpering by; the crowd melted like a receding wave, and the lady extricated herself, breathless as one of the maids in Lorenzo de Medici's Songs of the Carnival.

"How awkward!" she murmured. "How—"

The sentence remained unfinished and an exclamation, "Mr. Saint-Prosper!" punctuated a gleam of recognition.

"Miss Duran!" he exclaimed, equally surprised, for he had thought the strollers scattered to the four winds.

"Mrs. Service, if you please!" Demurely; at the same time extending her hand with a faint flush. "Yes; I am really and truly married! But it is so long since we met, I believe I—literally flew to your arms!"

"That was before you recognized me," he returned, in the same tone.

Susan laughed. "But how do you happen to be here? I thought you were dead. No; only wounded? How fortunate! Of course you came with the others. I should hardly know you. I declare you're as thin as a lath and gaunt as a ghost. You look older, too. Remorse, I suppose, for killing so many poor Mexicans!"

"And you"—surveying her face, which had the freshness of morn—"look younger!"

"Of course!" Adjusting some fancied disorder of hair or bonnet. "Marriage is a fountain of youth for"—with a sigh—"old maids. Susan Duran, spinster! Horrible! Do you blame me?"

"For getting married? Not at all. Who is the fortunate man?" asked Saint-Prosper.

"A minister; an orthodox minister; a most orthodox minister!"

"No?" His countenance expressed his sense of the incongruity of the union. Susan one of the elect; the meek and lowly yokemate of—"How did it happen?" he said.

"In a perverse moment, I—went to church," answered Susan. "There, I met him—I mean, I saw him—no, I mean, I heard him! It was enough. All the women were in love with him. How could I help it?"

"He must have been very persuasive."

"Persuasive! He scolded us every minute. Dress and the devil! I"—casting down her eyes—"interested him from the first. He—he married me to reform me."

"Ah," commented the soldier, gazing doubtfully upon Susan's smart gown, which, with elaborate art, followed the contours of her figure.

"But, of course, one must keep up appearances, you know," she continued. "What's the use of being a minister's wife if you aren't popular with the congregation? At least," she added, "with part of them!" And Susan tapped the pavement with a well-shod boot and showed her white teeth. "If you weren't popular, you couldn't fill the seats—I mean pews," she added, evasively. "But you must come and see me—us, I should say."

"Unfortunately, I am leaving to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" repeated Susan, reflectively. The pupils of her eyes contracted, something they did whenever she was thinking deeply, and her gaze passed quickly over his face, striving to read his impassive features. "So soon? When the carnival is on! That is too bad, to stay only one day, and not call on any of your old friends! Constance, I am sure, would be delighted to see you."

Many women would have looked away under the circumstances, but Susan's eyes were innocently fixed upon his. Half the pleasure of the assurance was in the accompanying glance and the friendly smile that went with it.

But a quiet question, "Miss Carew is living here?" was all the satisfaction she received.

"Yes. Have you not heard? She has a lovely home and an embarrassment of riches. Sweet embarrassment! Health and wealth! What more could one ask? Although I forgot, she was taken ill shortly after you left."

"Ill," he said, starting.

"Quite! But soon recovered!" And Susan launched into a narration of the events that had taken place while he was in Mexico, to which he listened with the composure of a man who, having had his share of the vagaries of fate, is not to be taken aback by new surprises, however singular or tragic. Susan expected an expression of regret—by look or word—over the loss of the marquis' fortune, but either he simulated indifference or passed the matter by with philosophical fortitude.

"Poor Barnes!" was his sole comment.

"Yes; it was very lonely for Constance at first," rattled on Susan. "But I fancy she will find a woman's solace for that ailment," she added meaningly.

"Marriage?" he asked soberly.

"Well, the engagement is not yet announced," said Susan, hesitatingly. "But you know how things get around? And the count has been so attentive! You remember him surely—the Count de Propriac? But I must be off. I have an appointment with my husband and am already half an hour late."

"Don't let me detain you longer, then, I beg."

"Oh, I don't mind. He's so delightfully jealous when I fail to appear on the stroke of the clock! Always imagines I am in some misch—but I mustn't tell tales out of school! So glad to have met you! Come and see me—do!"

And Susan with friendly hand-clasp and lingering look, tore herself away, the carnival lightness in her feet and the carnival laughter in her eyes.

"He is in love with her still," she thought, "or he wouldn't have acted so indifferent!" Her mind reverted to a cold little message she had received from Constance. "And to think he was innocent after all!" she continued, mentally reviewing the contents of the letter in which Constance had related the conversation with the lawyer. "I don't believe he'll call on her now, though, after—Well, why shouldn't I have told him what every one is talking about? Why not, indeed?"

A toss of the head dismissed the matter and any doubts pertaining thereto, while her thoughts flew from past to present, as a fortress on a car, its occupants armed with pellets of festival conflict, drove by amid peals of laughter. Absorbed in this scene of merriment, Susan forgot her haste, and kept her apostolic half waiting at the rendezvous with the patience of a Jacob tarrying for a Rachel. But when she did finally appear, with hat not perfectly poised, her hair in a pretty disarray, she looked so waywardly charming, he forgave her on the spot, and the lamb led the stern shepherd with a crook from Eve's apple tree.

"As thin as a lath and gaunt as a ghost!" repeated Saint-Prosper, as the fair penitent vanished in a whirl of gaiety. "Susan always was frank."

Smiling somewhat bitterly, he paused long enough to light a cigar, but it went out in his fingers as he strolled mechanically toward the wharves, through the gardens of a familiar square, where the wheezing of the distant steamers and the echoes of the cathedral clock marked the hours of pleasure or pain to-day as it had tolled them off yesterday. Beyond the pale of the orange trees with their golden wealth, the drays were rumbling in the streets and there were the same signs of busy traffic—for the carnival had not yet become a legal holiday—that he had observed when the strollers had reached the city and made their way to the St. Charles. He saw her anew, pale and thoughtful, leaning on the rail of the steamer looking toward the city, where events, undreamed of, were to follow thick and fast. He saw her, a slender figure, earnest, self-possessed, enter the city gates, unheralded, unknown. He saw her as he had known her in the wilderness—not as fancy might now depict her, the daughter of a marquis—a strolling player, and as such he loved best to think of her.

Arising out of his physical weakness and the period of inaction following the treaty of peace, he experienced a sudden homesickness for his native land; a desire to re-visit familiar scenes, to breathe the sweet air of the country, where his boyhood had been passed, to listen to the thunder of the boulevards, to watch the endless, sad-joyful processions.

Not far distant from the blossoming, redolent square was the office of the Trans-Atlantic Steamship Company, where a clerk, with a spray of jessamine in his coat, bent cordially toward Saint-Prosper as the latter entered, and, approaching the desk, inquired:

"The Dauphin is advertised to sail to-morrow for France?"

"Yes, sir; at twelve o'clock noon."

"Book me for a berth. Ernest Saint-Prosper," he added, in answer to the other's questioning look.

"Very good, sir. Would you like some labels for your baggage? Where shall we send for it? The St. Charles? Very well, sir. Are you going to the tableaux to-night?" he continued, with hospitable interest in one whom he rightly conceived a stranger in the city. "They say it will be the fashionable event. Good-day." As the prospective passenger paid for and received his ticket. "A pleasant voyage! The Dauphin is a new ship and should cross in three weeks—barring bad weather! Don't forget the tableaux. Everybody will be there."

The soldier did not reply; his heart had given a sudden throb at the clerk's last words. Automatically he placed his ticket in his pocket, and randomly answered the employee's further inquiries for instructions. He was not thinking of the Dauphin or her new engines, the forerunner of the modern quadruple-expansion arrangement, but through his brain rang the assurance: "Everybody will be there." And all the way up the street, it repeated itself again and again.



CHAPTER IX

"COMUS' MISTICK WITCHERIES"

That elusive, nocturnal company, "The Mistick Krewe of Comus," had appeared—"Comus, deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries"—and the dwellers in Phantasmagoria were joyfully numerous. More plentiful than at a modern spectacular performance, reveled gods, demons and fairies, while the children resembled a flight of masquerading butterflies. The ball at the theater, the Roman Veglioni, succeeded elaborate tableaux, the "Tartarus," of the ancients, and "Paradise Lost," of Milton, in which the "Krewe" impersonated Pluto and Proserpine, the fates, harpies and other characters of the representation. In gallery, dress-circle and parquet, the theater was crowded, the spectacle, one of dazzling toilets, many of them from the ateliers of the Parisian modistes; a wonderful evolution of Proserpine's toga and the mortal robes of the immortal Fates. Picture followed picture: The expulsion from Paradise; the conference of the Gorgons, and the court of pandemonium, where gluttony, drunkenness, avarice and vanity were skilfully set forth in uncompromising colors.

Availing themselves of the open-house of the unknown "Krewe," a composite host that vanished on the stroke of twelve, many of "Old Rough and Ready's" retinue mingled with the gathering, their uniforms, well-worn, even shabby, unlike the spick and span regimentals from the costumier. With bronzed faces and the indubitable air of campaigns endured, they were the objects of lively interest to the fair maskers, nor were themselves indifferent to the complaisance of their entertainers. Hands, burned by the sun, looked blacker that night, against the white gowns of waists they clasped; bearded faces more grim visaged in contrast with delicate complexions; embroidery and brocade whirled around with faded uniforms; and dancing aigrettes waved above frayed epaulets and shoulder straps.

"Loog at 'im!" murmured a fille a la cassette, regarding one of these officers who, however, held aloof from the festivities; a well-built young man, but thin and worn, as though he, like his uniform, had seen service. "If he would only carry my trunk!" she laughed, relapsing into French and alluding to the small chest she bore under her arm.

"Or my little white lamb!" gaily added her companion, a shepherdess.

And they tripped by with sidelong looks and obvious challenge which the quarry of these sprightly huntresses of men either chose to disregard or was unconscious of, as he deliberately surveyed his surroundings with more curiosity than pleasure and absently listened to a mountebank from "The Belle's Strategem."

"Who'll buy my nostrums?" cried the buffoon.

"What are they?" asked Folly, cantering near on a hobby horse.

"Different kinds for different people. Here's a powder for ladies—to dispel the rage for intrigue. Here's a pill for politicians—to settle bad consciences. Here's an eye-water for jealous husbands—it thickens the visual membrane. Here's something for the clergy—it eliminates windy discourses. Here's an infusion for creditors—it creates resignation and teaches patience."

"And what have you for lovers?"

"Nothing," answered the clown; "love like fever and ague must run its course. Nostrums! Who'll buy my nostrums?"

"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" enthusiastically exclaimed a tall, supple girl, laden with a mass of flowers.

"Isn't it too bad, though, you can't polka with some of the military gentlemen?" returned her companion who wore a toga and carried a lantern. "Mademoiselle Castiglione wouldn't let you come, until I promised not to allow you out of my sight."

"It was lovely of you to take me," she said, "and I don't mind about the military gentlemen."

"My dear, if all women were like you, we poor civilians would not be relegated to the background! I wish, though, I had worn some other costume. This—ahem, dress!—has a tendency to get between my legs and disconcert my philosophical dignity. I can understand why Diogenes didn't care about walking abroad. My only wonder is that everybody didn't stay in his tub in those days. Don't talk to me about the 'noble Roman!' Why, he wore skirts!"

"And Monsieur Intaglio lectured to us for an hour to-day about the wonderful drapery of the ancients!" laughed the girl. "The poetry of dress, he called it!"

"Then I prefer prose. Hello!"—pausing and raising his lantern, as they drew near the officer who had fallen under the observation of the fille a la cassette. "Colonel Saint-Prosper, or set me down for an ass—or Plato, which is the same thing!"

"Straws!" said the soldier, as the bard frankly lifted his mask and tilted it back over his forehead.

"Glad to see you!" continued the poet, extending his hand. "I haven't run across you before since the night of the banquet; the debut of Barnes' company you remember? You must have left town shortly afterward. Returned this morning, of course! By the way, there's one of your old friends here to-night."

Saint-Prosper felt the color mount to his face, and even Straws noted the change. "Who is that?" asked the soldier, awkwardly.

"Mrs. Service—Miss Duran that was—now one of our most dashing—I should say, charitable, ladies. Plenty of men at Service's church now. She's dressed in Watteau-fashion to-night, so if you see any one skipping around, looking as though she had just stepped from the Embarkation for the Island of Venus, set her down for the minister's pretty wife!"

"And the minister?" asked Saint-Prosper, mechanically.

"He brought her; he compromised on a Roundhead costume, himself! But we must be off. Au revoir; don't be backward; the ladies are all military-mad. It may be a field of arms"—casting his glance over the assemblage of fashionably dressed ladies, with a quizzical smile—"but not hostile arms! Come, Celestina—Nydia, I mean!"

And Straws' arm stole about the waist of his companion, as Saint-Prosper watched them disappearing in the throng of dancers. It was Celestina's first ball, and after her long training at the Castiglione institute, she danced divinely. Evidently, too, she was reconciled to the warden's edict, denying her the freedom of the ball-room, for she showed no disposition to escape from Straws' watchful care. On the contrary, though her glance wandered to the wonders around her, they quickly returned to the philosopher with the lamp, as though she courted the restraint to which she was subjected. Something like a pang shot through the soldier's breast as he followed the pair with his gaze; he seemed looking backward into a world of youth and pleasure, passed beyond recall.

"It is useless to deny it! I knew you when I first saw you!" exclaimed a familiar voice near by, and turning around sharply, the officer observed approaching a masked lady, graceful of figure and lacking nothing in the numerical strength of her escort. It was to her that these words were addressed by an agile man of medium stature who had apparently penetrated her disguise. The lady, who would have attracted attention anywhere by her bearing, wore a pardessus of white gauze, fitting close and bordered with a silver band; the sleeves, short; the skirt of white gauze and very ample, as the fashion of the day required; the feet shod in small white silk "bottines"; the hair in bands, ornamented with wild poppies. Altogether this costume was described by Phazma as "ravishing, the gown adorning the lady, and the lady the gown, her graces set forth against the sheen of voluminous satin folds, like those of some portrait by Sir Joshua or Gainsborough."

"How could you expect any one not to know you?" continued the speaker, as this little coterie drew near, their masks a pretext for mystery. "You may impersonate, but you can not deceive."

"That is a poor compliment, since you take me for an actress," laughed the lady. An hilarious outburst from an ill-assorted cluster of maskers behind them drowned his reply, and the lady and her attendants passed on.

Saint-Prosper drew his breath sharply. "She is here, after all," he said to himself.

"A nostrum for jilted beaux!" called out a mountebank, seeing him standing there, preoccupied, alone, at the same time tendering a pill as large as a plum. A punchinello jarred against him with: "Pardonnez moi, pardie!" On the perfumed air the music swelled rapturously; a waltz, warm with the national life of Vienna; the swan song of Lanner! Softly, sweetly, breathed "Die Schoenbrunner;" faster whirled the moving forms. Eyes flashed more brightly; little feet seemed born for dancing; cheeks, pale at midday, were flushed with excitement! Why doesn't he dance, wondered the lady with the white lamb. Carnival comes but once a year; a mad, merry time; when gaiety should sweep all cares out of doors!

"Said Strephon to Chloe: 'For a kiss, I'll give thee the choice of my flock.' Said Chloe to Strephon: 'What bliss, If you'll add to the gift a new smock,'"

hummed the lively nymph, as she tripped by.

"Said Chloe to Strephon: 'For a kiss, I'll return thee the choice of your flock. Said Strephon to Chloe: 'What bliss, With it I'll buy Phyllis a new frock,'"

she concluded, throwing a glance over her shoulder.

A sudden distaste for the festal ferment, the laughter and merriment; a desire to escape from the very exuberance of high spirits and cheer led the soldier to make his way slowly from the ball-room to the balcony, where, although not removed from the echoes of liveliness within, he looked out upon the quietude of the night. Overhead stretched the sky, a measureless ocean, with here and there a silvery star like the light on a distant ship; an unfathomable sea of ether that beat down upon him. Radiant and serene, in the boundless calm of the heavens, the splendent lanterns seemed suspended on stationary craft peacefully rocked at anchor. Longings, suppressed through months of absence, once more found full sway; Susan's words were recalled by the presence of the count.

Suddenly the song of "Die Schoenbrunner" ceased within, and, as its pulsations became hushed, many of the dancers, an elate, buoyant throng, sought the balcony. Standing in the shadow near the entrance, aroused from a train of reflections by this abrupt exodus, the soldier saw among the other merry-makers, Constance and the count, who passed through the door, so near he could almost have touched her.

"Here she is," said the count, as they approached an elderly lady, seated near the edge of the balcony. "Ah, Madam," he continued to the latter, "if you would only use your good offices in my behalf! Miss Carew is cruelty itself."

"Why, what has she done?" asked the good gentlewoman.

"Insisted upon deserting the ball-room!"

"In my day," said the elderly ally of the nobleman, "you could not drag the young ladies from cotillion or minuet. And the men would stay till the dawn to toast them!"

"And I've no doubt, Madam, your name was often on their lips," returned the count gallantly, who evidently believed in the Spanish proverb: "Woo the duenna, not the maid; then in love the game's well played!"

The ally in his cause made some laughing response which the soldier did not hear. Himself unseen, Saint-Prosper bent his eyes upon the figure of the young girl, shadowy but obvious in the reflected light of the bright constellations. Even as he gazed, her hand removed the mask, revealing the face he knew so well. In the silence below, the fountain tinkled ever so loudly, as she stood, half-turned toward the garden, a silken head-covering around her shoulders; the head outlined without adornment, save the poppies in her hair.

Her presence recalled scenes of other days: the drive from the races, when her eyes had beamed so softly beneath the starry luster. Did she remember? He dared not hope so; he did not. To him, it brought, also, harsher memories; yet his mind was filled most with her beauty, which appeared to gloss over all else and hold him, a not impassive spectator, to the place where she was standing. She seemed again Juliet—the Juliet of inns and school-house stages—the Juliet he had known before she had come to New Orleans, whose genius had transformed the barren stage into a garden of her own creation.

And yet something made her different; an indefinable new quality appeared to rest upon her. He felt his heart beating faster; he was glad he had come; for the moment he forgot his jealousy in watching her, as with new wealth of perfume, the languid breeze stirred the tresses above her pallid, immovable features. But the expression of confidence with which the count was regarding her, although ostensibly devoting himself to her companion, renewed his inquietude.

Had she allowed herself to be drawn into a promised alliance with that titled roue? Involuntarily the soldier's face grew hard and stern; the count's tactics were so apparent—flattering attention to the elderly gentlewoman and a devoted, but reserved, bearing toward the young girl in which he would rely upon patience and perseverance for the consummation of his wishes. But certainly Constance did not exhibit marked preference for his society; on the contrary, she had hardly spoken to him since they had left the ball-room. Now clasping the iron railing of the balcony, she leaned farther out; the flowers of the vine, clambering up one of the supports, swayed gently around her, and she started at the moist caress on her bare arm.

"It is cold here," she said, drawing back.

"Allow me—your wrap!" exclaimed the count, springing to her side with great solicitude.

But she adjusted the garment without his assistance.

"You must be careful of your health—for the sake of your friends!" Accompanying the words with a significant glance.

"The count is right!" interposed the elderly gentlewoman. "As he usually is!" she added, laughing.

"Oh, Madam!" he said, bowing. "Miss Carew does not agree with you, I am sure?" Turning to the girl.

"I haven't given the matter any thought," she replied, coldly. She shivered slightly, nervously, and looked around.

At that moment the lights were turned on in the garden—another surprise arranged by the Mistick Krewe!—illuminating trees and shrubbery, and casting a sudden glare upon the balcony.

"Bravo!" said the count. "It's like a fete-champetre! And hear the mandolins! Tra-la-la-la-la! Why, what is it?"

She had given a sudden cry and stood staring toward the right at the back of the balcony. Within, the orchestra once more began to play, and, as the strains of music were wafted to them, a host of masqueraders started toward the ball-room. When the inflow of merry-makers had ceased, bewildered, trembling, she looked with blanched face toward the spot where the soldier had been standing, but he was gone.

At that moment the cathedral clock began to strike—twelve times it sounded, and, at the last stroke, the Mistick Krewe, one by one began to disappear, vanishing as mysteriously as they had come. Pluto, Proserpine, the Fates, fairies and harpies; Satan, Beelzebub; the dwellers in pandemonium; the aids to appetite—all took their quick departure, leaving the musicians and the guests of the evening, including the visiting military, to their own pleasures and devices. The first carnival had come to a close.