galled
them none the less for being congratulatory. So handsome and
dangerous-looking that the laugh died, they halted midway of the narrow
incline, impeding the stream of immigrants at their heels, and sent up a
fierce stare in response to the propitiatory smiles of the boat's
commander and the youth standing near him. Only one of the twins spoke,
but the eyes of his brother vindictively widened till they gleamed a
flaming concurrence in his fellow's high-keyed, oath-bound threat:

"We'll get even with you for this, Captain John Courteney. We warn you
and all your tribe."

The old nurse on the roof, to whose arm her slim charge was clinging
with both hands, moaned audibly: "Oh, Lawd, Mahs' Julian! Mahs' Lucian!"

The girl laughed, laughed so merrily and convincingly--as if to laugh
was the one reasonable thing to do--that most of the passengers did
likewise. Even the grave youth whose back was to her inwardly granted
that the lamentable habit could make itself useful in an awkward
juncture. While he so thought, he observed the unruffled owner of the
_Votaress_ motion to the chagrined young men to clear the way by coming
aboard, and as they haughtily did so he heard the commander's father say
to the girl still at his side:

"I believe those are your brothers?"

"Yes," she responded, for once without mirth, "my brothers," and the
peace-loving but conscientious nurse added with a modest pretence of
pure soliloquy:

"One dess as hahmless as de yetheh."

The bell boomed. The last transatlantic stranger shuffled aboard, wan
and feeble. Now to one wheel, now to the other, the pilot jingled to
back away, then to stop, then to go ahead, then to both for full speed,
and once more the beautiful craft moved majestically up the river. Her
course shifted from south to west, the shores for a time widened apart,
the low-roofed city swung and sank away backward, groves of orange and
magnolia grew plainer to the eye than suburban streets, and the course
changed again, from west to north. Soon on the right, behind a high
levee and backed by a sombre swamp forest, appeared the live-oaks and
gardens of Carrollton, and presently on the left came Nine-mile Point
and another bend of the river westward. As the boat's prow turned, the
waters, from shore to shore, reflected the low sun so dazzlingly that
nearly all the passengers on the roof moved aft, whence, ravished by the
ascending odors of supper, they went below.

But the handso