oor, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed
rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and
murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes
on his back.

There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever
he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he
saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state
of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him
particularly discordant.

Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in
the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant,
mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_. It was a portion of the
Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants
of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of
Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper
title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city,
Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles,
who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their
complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading
rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed
these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three
with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.

Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Americain, in
English.

"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other
governments we had any quantity!"

"Yes," said the venturesome Americain in retort, "such as it was;
_assignats, liberanzas, bons_--Claiborne will give us better money than
that when he starts his bank."

"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father.
What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he
had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered
curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.

A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been
greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without
turning his eyes.

"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to
be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty
they give us--all eat out of one trough."

"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man,
setti