ile.

"They never found out," said "California," "that the fellow who played
'Bounding Billow' and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' was me--I--myself."

He told all as honestly, fearlessly as we might know he would. When his
huge listener tried to say off-handedly that every man who knew anything
knew that women and men never see things alike and that different
witnesses could, quite honestly, give irreconcilable accounts of the
same thing, the Californian serenely waved away all such gloss and with
the seated giant hanging over him like a thunder-cloud said that the
twins could never see anything straight enough to tell the truth about
it if they wanted to and that just as certainly they often didn't want
to. Pausing there and getting no retort, he ventured another step. Said
he:

"And there you've hung the case up for eight years."

"That's my business!" Gideon smote the arm of his chair.

"California" laughed a moment like a girl, with drooping head. Then--oh,
the twins had their good points, yes. One was the way they stuck to each
other. And their biggest virtue, their "best holt," the one their worst
enemy couldn't help liking them for, was their invincible sand.

"The devil couldn't scare 'em with his tail red-hot."

At that the father laughed gratefully.

"They'd ought to be in some trade where pluck," the Californian went on,
"is the whole show. They'd ought to be soldiers. As plain up-and-down
fighters for fight'n's sake, commodore, they'd hit it off as sweet as
blackstrap!"

The truth smote hard but the parent feigned a jovial inappreciation. If
that was so they had made a "most damnable misdeal," he laughed, having
settled down in Natchez together, "too soft on each other to marry and
as tame as parrakeets"; Julian as county sheriff, his brother a
physician.

The Californian silently doubted the tameness. Abruptly, though in tones
of worship, he inquired after Madame Hayle.

Madame just then was at home, on the plantation at Natchez. Yes, she and
Ramsey often made trips with Gideon on that _Paragon_ which they had
gone up the river to come down on, in '52. The _Paragon_, wonderfully
preserved, was still in the "Vicksburg and Bends" trade and happened
then to be some forty-eight hours ahead of the _Enchantress_ and nearing
New Orleans. Madame and her daughter now and then spent part of the
social season in the great river's great seaport, which was--"bound to
be the greatest in the world, my boy," said