ere am I going?" He began evidently to look, or try to look,
for some person; but they could not divine his wish until, with piteous
feebleness, he called:

"Aurore De Grapion!"

So he had known her all the time.

Honore's mother had dropped on her knees beside the bed, dragging Aurora
down with her.

They rose together.

The old man groped distressfully with one hand. She laid her own in it.

"Honore!

"What could he want?" wondered the tearful family. He was feeling about
with the other hand.

"Hon'--Honore"--his weak clutch could scarcely close upon his nephew's
hand.

"Put them--put--put them--"

What could it mean? The four hands clasped.

"Ah!" said one, with fresh tears, "he is trying to speak and cannot."

But he did.

"Aurora De Gra--I pledge'--pledge'--pledged--this union--to your
fa'--father--twenty--years--ago."

The family looked at each other in dejected amazement. They had never
known it.

"He is going," said Agamemnon; and indeed it seemed as though he was
gone; but he rallied.

"Agamemnon! Valentine! Honore! patriots! protect the race! Beware of
the"--that sentence escaped him. He seemed to fancy himself haranguing a
crowd; made another struggle for intelligence, tried once, twice, to
speak, and the third time succeeded:

"Louis'--Louisian'--a--for--ever!" and lay still.

They put those two words on his tomb.

CHAPTER LIX

WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES

And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the mason who
cut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,
half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints came,
attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon the old man's
tomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more distinctly as years went
by, that Forever was a trifle long for one to confine one's patriotic
affection to a small fraction of a great country.

* * * * *

"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the police
in their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to justice?" asked
some _Americain_ or other of 'Polyte Grandissime.

"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neither
Palmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when we
cannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no police!"

So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the other two
were never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the