right in a dim, narrow way, the captain patted the
youth softly on the back, and said:

"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies."

So Bonaventure asked none. But presently, in one of those dens called
sailors' boarding-houses, somewhere down on the water-front near the
Mint, he was brought face to face with a stranger whose manner seemed
to offer the reverse proposition. Of him the youth asked questions and
got answers.

'Thanase Beausoleil still lived, far beyond seas. How? why? If this
man spake truly, because here in New Orleans, at the last turn in the
long, weary journey that was to have brought the young volunteer home,
he had asked and got the aid of this informant to ship--before the
mast--for foreign parts. But why? Because his ambition and pride,
explained the informant, had outgrown Carancro, and his heart had
tired of the diminished memory of the little Zosephine.

Bonaventure hurried away. What storms buffeted one another in his
bosom!

Night had fallen upon the great city. Long stretches of street lay now
between high walls, and now between low-hanging eaves, empty of human
feet and rife with solitude. Through long distances he could run and
leap, and make soft, mild pretence of shouting and smiting hands. The
quest was ended! rivalry gone of its own choice, guilt washed from the
hands, love returned to her nest. Zosephine! Zosephine! Away now,
away to the reward of penance, patience, and loyalty! Unsought,
unhoped-for reward! As he ran, the crescent moon ran before him in the
sky, and one glowing star, dipping low, beckoned him into the west.

And yet that night a great riot broke out in his heart; and in the
morning there was a look on his face as though in that tumult
conscience had been drugged, beaten, stoned, and left for dead outside
the gate of his soul.

There was something of defiance in his eye, not good to see, as he
started down the track of the old Opelousas Railroad, with the city
and the Mississippi at his back. When he had sent a letter ahead of
him, he had no money left to pay for railway passage. Should he delay
for that or aught else, he might never start; for already the ghost of
conscience was whispering in at the barred windows of his heart:

"It is not true. The man has told you falsely. It is not true."

And so he was tramping once more--toward Carancro. And never before
with such determined eagerness. Nothing could turn him about now. Once
a train came in sight