me smiled, partly at the apothecary's brief speech, but
much more at his success.

"Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as he came near.

The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.

M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with him, and
he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the levee, and
took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.

"He gives his pledge not to try again," said the Creole, as the two
companions proceeded to resume the saddle. "Do not look after him."
(Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)

They turned homeward.

"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, suddenly, "if the _immygrant_
has cause of complaint, how much more has _that_ man! True, it is only
love for which he would have just now drowned himself; yet what an
accusation, my-de'-seh, is his whole life against that 'caste' which
shuts him up within its narrow and almost solitary limits! And yet, Mr.
Frowenfeld, this people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest
and most precious of their virtues. My-de'-seh, it never occurs to us
that in this matter we are interested, and therefore disqualified,
witnesses. We say we are not understood; that the jury (the civilized
world) renders its decision without viewing the body; that we are judged
from a distance. We forget that we ourselves are too _close_ to see
distinctly, and so continue, a spectacle to civilization, sitting in a
horrible darkness, my-de'-seh!" He frowned.

"The shadow of the Ethiopian," said the grave apothecary.

M. Grandissime's quick gesture implied that Frowenfeld had said the very
word.

"Ah! my-de'-seh, when I try sometimes to stand outside and look at it, I
am _ama-aze_ at the length, the blackness of that shadow!" (He was so
deeply in earnest that he took no care of his English.) "It is the
_Nemesis_ w'ich, instead of coming afteh, glides along by the side of
this morhal, political, commercial, social mistake! It blanches,
my-de'-seh, ow whole civilization! It drhags us a centurhy behind the
rhes' of the world! It rhetahds and poisons everhy industrhy we
got!--mos' of all our-h immense agrhicultu'e! It brheeds a thousan'
cusses that nevva leave home but jus' flutter-h up an' rhoost,
my-de'-seh, on ow _heads_; an' we nevva know it!--yes, sometimes some of
us know it."

He changed the subject.

They had repassed the ruins of Fort St. Louis, and were well within the
precincts of the little