ut he did not. He did not even smile, but
lifted the rein a little till the horse stepped forward, and, putting
out his hand, said:--

"Good-by. You don't need no directions. Jess tell the lady where you'
boardin' that you've sort o' consented to spend a day or two with old
Adrien Sanchez, and get into the wagon when it comes for you." He let go
her hand. "Good-by, Alice." The child looked up in silence and pressed
herself against her mother. "Good-by," said he once more.

"Good-by," replied Mary.

His eyes lingered as she dropped her own.

"Come, Alice," she said, resisting the little one's effort to stoop and
pick a wild-pea blossom, and the mother and child started slowly back
the way they had come. The spy turned his horse, and moved still more
slowly in the opposite direction. But before he had gone many rods he
turned the animal's head again, rode as slowly back, and, beside the
spot where Mary had stood, got down, and from the small imprint of her
shoe in the damp sand took the pea-blossom, which, in turning to
depart, she had unawares trodden under foot. He looked at the small,
crushed thing for a moment, and then thrust it into his bosom; but in a
moment, as if by a counter impulse, drew it forth again, let it flutter
to the ground, following it with his eyes, shook his head with an amused
air, half of defiance and half of discomfiture, turned, drew himself
into the saddle, and with one hand laid upon another on the saddle-bow
and his eyes resting on them in meditation, passed finally out of sight.

* * *

Here, then, in this lone old Creole cottage, Mary was tarrying, prisoner
of hope, coming out all hours of the day, and scanning the wide view,
first, only her hand to shade her brow, and then with the old
ship's-glass, Alice often standing by and looking up at this
extraordinary toy with unspoken wonder. All that Mary could tell her of
things seeable through it could never persuade the child to risk her own
eye at either end of it. So Mary would look again and see, out in the
prairie, in the morning, the reed birds, the marsh hen, the blackbirds,
the sparrows, the starlings, with their red and yellow epaulets, rising
and fluttering and sinking again among the lilies and mallows, and the
white crane, paler than a ghost, wading in the grassy shallows. She saw
the ravening garfish leap from the bayou, and the mullet in shining
hundreds spatter away to left and right; and the fisherman a