ilization. I will never go back; I will live there no
more!"

"That is good news for us," returned the land baron.

"Your politeness almost reconciles me to staying," said the old man,
more affably. "But I am on my way to the club. What do you say to a
rubber?"

The patroon readily assented. In front of the hotel waited the
marquis' carriage, on the door of which was his coat-of-arms--argent,
three mounts vert, on each a sable bird. Entering this conveyance,
they were soon being driven over the stones at a pace which jarred
every bone in the marquis' body and threatened to shake the breath of
life from his trembling and attenuated figure. He jumped about like a
parched pea, and when finally they drew up with a jerk and a jolt, the
marquis was fairly gasping. After an interval to recover himself, he
took his companion's arm, and, with his assistance, mounted the broad
steps leading to the handsome and commodious club house.

"At least," said the nobleman, dryly, as he paused on the stairs, "our
pavements are so well-kept in Paris that a drive there in a tumbril to
the scaffold is preferable to a coach in New Orleans!"

CHAPTER II

"ONLY AN INCIDENT"

To the scattering of the anti-renters by the rescue party that
memorable night at the manor the land baron undoubtedly owed his
safety. Beyond reach of personal violence in a neighboring town,
without his own domains, from which he was practically exiled, he had
sought redress in the courts, only to find his hands tied, with no
convincing clue to the perpetrators of these outrages. On the patroon
lay the burden of proof, and he found it more difficult than he had
anticipated to establish satisfactorily any kind of a case, for alibis
blocked his progress at every turn.

At war with his neighbors, and with little taste for the monotony of a
northern winter, he bethought him of his native city, determined to
leave the locality and at a distance wait for the turmoil to subside.
His brief dream of the rehabilitation of the commonwealth brought only
memories stirring him to restlessness. He made inquiries about the
strollers, but to no purpose. The theatrical band had come and gone
like gipsies.

Saying nothing to any one, except Scroggs, to whom he entrusted a load
of litigation, he at length quietly departed in the regular stage,
until he reached a point where two strap rails proclaimed the new
method of conveyance. Wedged in the small compartment of a little