hoes me now?" asked the deaf one.

"One hundred and eighty thousand dollars," said the Colonel, firmly.

"Yass," said Charlie. "I don't want Belle Demoiselles."

The old Colonel's quiet laugh intimated it made no difference either
way.

"But me," continued Charlie, "me,--I'm got le Compte De Charleu's blood
in me, any'ow,--a litt' bit, any'ow, ain't it?"

The Colonel nodded that it was.

"_Bien!_ If I go out of dis place and don't go to Belles Demoiselles, de
peoples will say,--dey will say, 'Old Charlie he been all doze time tell
a blame _lie!_ He ain't no kin to his old grace-gran-muzzer, not a blame
bit! He don't got nary drop of De Charleu blood to save his blame
low-down old Injin soul!' No, sare! What I want wid money, den? No,
sare! My place for yours!"

He turned to go into the house, just too soon to see the Colonel make an
ugly whisk at him with his riding-whip. Then the Colonel, too, moved
off.

Two or three times over, as he ambled homeward, laughter broke through
his annoyance, as he recalled old Charlie's family pride and the
presumption of his offer. Yet each time he could but think better
of--not the offer to swap, but the preposterous ancestral loyalty. It
was so much better than he could have expected from his "low-down"
relative, and not unlike his own whim withal--the proposition which went
with it was forgiven.

This last defeat bore so harshly on the master of Belles Demoiselles,
that the daughters, reading chagrin in his face, began to repent. They
loved their father as daughters can, and when they saw their pretended
dejection harassing him seriously they restrained their complaints,
displayed more than ordinary tenderness, and heroically and
ostentatiously concluded there was no place like Belles Demoiselles. But
the new mood touched him more than the old, and only refined his
discontent. Here was a man, rich without the care of riches, free from
any real trouble, happiness as native to his house as perfume to his
garden, deliberately, as it were with premeditated malice, taking joy by
the shoulder and bidding her be gone to town, whither he might easily
have followed, only that the very same ancestral nonsense that kept
Injin Charlie from selling the old place for twice its value prevented
him from choosing any other spot for a city home.

But by and by the charm of nature and the merry hearts around him
prevailed; the fit of exalted sulks passed off, and after a while the
year fla