xandre, "proof that 'tis good to print
ag-ain! The people that read that before, they are mozely dead."

"At the same time," Chester responded, rising and addressing the chair,
his hostess, "because that is a sequel to the _grand'-mere's_ story,
and because _this_--this West Indian episode--is not a sequel and has
no sequel, and particularly because we ought to let mademoiselle be
first to judge whether my uncle's _memorandum_ is fit company for her
two stories, I propose, I say, that before we read this West Indian
thing we read my uncle's _memorandum_, and that we send and beg her to
come and hear it with us. It's in my pocket."

Patter, patter, patter, went a dozen hands.

"Marcel," the hostess cried in French, "go!"

"I will go with you," Mme. Alexandra proposed, "she will never come
without me."

"Tis but a step," said Mme. De l'Isle, "the three of us will go
together." They went.

Those who waited talked on of their city's true stories. The vastest
and most monstrous war in human history was smoking and roaring just
across the Atlantic, and in it they had racial, national, personal
interests; but for the moment they left all that aside. "One troub',"
Dubroca said, "'tis that all those three stone'--and all I can
rim-ember--even that story of M'sieu' Smith about the fall of the
city--1862--they all got in them _somewhere_, alas! the nigger. The
_publique_ they are not any longer pretty easy to fascinate on that
subjec'."

"Ho!" Beloiseau rejoined, "_au contraire_, he's an advantage! If only
you keep him for the back-_ground_; biccause in the mind of
every-_body_ tha'z where he is, and that way he has the advantage to
ril-ate those storie' together and----"

Mademoiselle came. Her arrival, reception, installation near the
hostess and opposite Chester are good enough untold. If elsewhere in
that wide city a like number ever settled down to listen to an untamed
writer's manuscript in as sweet content with one another _their_ story
ought to be printed. "Well," Mme. Castanado chanted, "commence." And
Chester read:

X

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

When I was twenty-four I lived at the small capital of my native
Southern State.

My parental home was three counties distant. My father, a slaveholding
planter, was a noble gentleman, whom I loved as he loved me. But we
could not endure each other's politics and I was trying to exist on my
professional fees, in the law office of one of our ex-gove