who wrote back: 'Yes, he had been brought home, and
at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here
in New Orleans.' So then Sidney begged Maud, who by luck was coming
here, to bring her here to find him."

"Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus."

"Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent
to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?"

"Yes. But--who told you all this so exactly--your _grand'mere_
herself, or your _grandpere_?"

"Ah--she, no. I never saw her. And _grandpere_--no, he was killed
before I was born."

"_What_?"

"Yes, all that I'll come to. This I'm telling now is from my own papa.
He had it from _grandpere_. _Grand'mere_ and Sidney came with friends,
a gentleman and his wife, by ship from New York."

"And all put up at Hotel St. Louis?"

"Yes. From there Maud and Sidney began their search. But now, first,
about that speculating in slaves: those two Theophiles, first the
father, then both, hated slavery. 'Twas by nature and in everything
that they were radical. Their friends knew that, even when they only
said, 'Oh, you are extreme!' or 'Those Chapdelaines are extremist.' In
those years from about eighteen-forty to 'sixty----"

"When the slavery question was about to blaze----"

"Yes--they voted Whig. That was the most antislavery they could vote
and stay here. But under the rose they said: 'All right! extremist,
yet Whig; we'll be extreme Whig of a new kind. We'll trade in slaves.'"

Chester laughed. "I begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance
bade Aline note the rapt attention of Cupid. Her answering smile was
so confidential that his heart leaped.

"I'll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then
resumed: "While _grandpere_ was yet a boy his father had begun that,
that slave-buying. On that auction-block he would often see a slave
about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be
increased by training to some trade. You see?--blacksmith, lady's
maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?"

Chester darkened. "So he made the thing pay?"

"_Seem_ to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for
something else."

"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make
profits difficult?"

"Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it
at all. They would not have been respected."

"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were res