re and pantomiming his
delight to the two Gale children who had come with Alluna to welcome
him.

"Who's dose beeg, tall people w'at stan' 'longside of you, Miz Gale?"
he called to her; then, shading his eyes elaborately, he cried, in a
great voice: "Wall! wal! I b'lieve dat's M'sieu Jean an' Mam'selle
Mollee. Ba Gar! Dey get so beeg w'ile I'm gone I don' know dem no more!"

The youthful Gales wriggled at this delicious flattery and dug their
tiny moccasined toes into the sand. Molly courtesied nervously and
continuously as she clung to her mother, and the boy showed a gap where
two front teeth had been and was now filled by a very pink tongue.

"Wen you goin' stop grow, anyhow, you two, eh?" continued the
Frenchman, and then, in a tone of sadness: "If I t'ink you ack lak'
dis, I don' buy all dese present. Dese t'ing ain' no good for ole
folks. I guess I'll t'row dem away." He made as if to heave a bundle
that he carried into the river, whereupon the children shrieked at him
so shrilly that he laughed long and incontinently at the success of his
sally.

Lieutenant Burrell had come with the others, for the arrival of a
steamboat called for the presence of every soul in camp, and, spying
Necia in the outskirts of the crowd, he took his place beside her. He
felt constrained, after what had happened on the previous evening, but
she seemed to have forgotten the episode, and greeted him with her
usual frankness. Even had she remembered it, there was nothing he could
say in explanation or in apology. He had lain awake for hours thinking
of her, and had fallen asleep with her still in his mind, for the
revelation of her blood had come as a shock to him, the full force of
which he could not appreciate until he had given himself time to think
of it calmly.

He had sprung from a race of Slave-holders, from a land where birth and
breed are more than any other thing, where a drop of impure blood
effects an ineradicable stain; therefore the thought of this girl's
ignoble parentage was so repugnant to him that the more he pondered it
the more pitiful it seemed, the more monstrous. Lying awake and
thinking of her in the stillness of his quarters, it had seemed a very
unfortunate and a very terrible thing. During his morning duties the
vision of her had been fresh before him again, and his constant
contemplation of the matter had wrought a change in his attitude
towards the girl, of which he was uncomfortably conscious and which h