hare in those long
low schooners that you have kindly taken under your care. I have some
boxes of doubloons stowed away, it is true. But, after all, I am
attached to this place; I could not sell the estate for want of a
purchaser; and I am surrounded by such an infernal set of rascals, that
I never could embark myself with my hard cash without being murdered.
No, we must do at Rome as the Romans do."

"A sweet specimen of a Roman you are," thought I, and I fell into a
short reverie; but it was broken up most agreeably, by seeing Josephine
trip before the open jalousies with a basket of flowers in her hand.
She paused for a moment before us, and looked kindly at her father and
smilingly at me. It was the first joyous, really joyous smile that I
had seen in her expressive countenance. It went right to my heart, and
brought with it a train of the most rapturous feelings.

"God bless her heart; I do love her dearly!" said the old man. "I'll
give you a convincing proof of it, my young friend, Rattlin. Ah! bah--
but you other English have spoiled all--you have taken him with you."

"Who?"

"Why, Captain Durand. That large low black schooner was his. Yes, he
would have treated her well (said Monsieur le Pere, musing), and he
offered to sign an agreement, never to put her to field-work, or to have
her flogged."

"Put whom to field-work?--flog whom?" said I, all amazement.

"Josephine, to be sure; had you not taken him prisoner, I was going,
next month, to sell her to him for two hundred doubloons."

"Now, may God confound you for an unholy, unnatural villain!" said I,
springing up, and overturning the table and wine into the fatherly lap
of Monsieur Manuel. "If you did not stand there, my host, I would, with
my hand on your throat, force you on your knees to swear that--that--
that you'll never sell poor, poor Josephine for a slave. Flog her!"
said I, shuddering, and the tears starting into my eyes--"I should as
soon have thought of flogging an empress's eldest daughter."

"Be pacified, my son," said the old slave-dealer, deliberately clearing
himself of the _debris_ of the dessert--"be pacified, my son."

The words "my son" went with a strange and cheering sound into my very
heart's core. The associations that they brought with it were
blissful--I listened to him with calmness.

"Be pacified, my son," he continued, "and I will prove to you that I am
doing everything for the best. The old colonel, our lat