look, "I will tell. He will take
the place and fill it if you will give me to him for his own--but oh,
messieurs, for the love of God--I do not want to be his wife!"

The overseer looked at the Senor, ready to approve whatever he should
decide. Bras-Coupe's intrepid audacity took the Spaniard's heart by
irresistible assault.

"I leave it entirely with Senor Fusilier," he said.

"But he is not my master; he has no right--"

"Silence!"

And she was silent; and so, sometimes, is fire in the wall.

Agricola's consent was given with malicious promptness, and as
Bras-Coupe's fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he fill his
office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear veranda of the
Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one already appointed to
take place in the grand hall of the same house six months from that
present day. In the meanwhile Palmyre should remain with Mademoiselle,
who had promptly but quietly made up her mind that Palmyre should not be
wed unless she wished to be. Bras-Coupe made no objection, was royally
worthless for a time, but learned fast, mastered the "gumbo" dialect in
a few weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for
gourde dollars. Nevertheless, there were but three persons within as
many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.

The first was Palmyre. His bearing in her presence was ever one of
solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in
himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth being
there to see. "It was royal!" said the overseer.

The second was not that official. When Bras-Coupe said--as, at stated
intervals, he did say--"_Mo courri c'ez Agricole Fusilier pou' 'oir
'namourouse_ (I go to Agricola Fusilier to see my betrothed,)" the
overseer would sooner have intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws
than that one lover. He would look after him and shake a prophetic head.
"Trouble coming; better not deceive that fellow;" yet that was the very
thing Palmyre dared do. Her admiration for Bras-Coupe was almost
boundless. She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the
contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the gigantic
embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded realization of
her lifetime longing for terrible strength. But the single deficiency
in all this impassioned regard was--what so many fairer loves have found
impossible to explain to so many gentler love