much the priest had to do with their
attitude. They had little also that he wanted--he shopped for a week
before he found a gaudy pitcher and basin and a strip of matting for
his floor. Chairs, bureaus, bookcases, and tables did not exist. He
said as much to Madame Picard, and gathered from her growled response
that he must find a carpenter. The cripple, his constant companion in
his first days on the island, took him to one--a gray old negro who
wore on a shoe-string about his neck a pouch which Simpson thought at
first to be a scapular, and whom age and his profession had made
approachable. He was garrulous even; he ceased working when at length
he understood what Simpson wanted, sat in his doorway with his head in
the sun and his feet in the shade, and lit a pipe made out of a tiny
cocoanut. Yes--he could build chairs, tables, anything m'sieu' wanted
There was wood also--black palm for drawer-knobs and cedar and
mahogany and rosewood, but especially mahogany. An excellent wood,
pleasant to work in and suave to the touch. Did they use it in the
United States, he wondered?

"A great deal," answered Simpson. "And the San Domingo wood is the
best, I believe."

"San Domingo--but yes," the carpenter said; "the Haytian also--that is
excellent. Look!"

He led Simpson to the yard at the rear of his house and showed him
half a dozen boards, their grain showing where the broad axe had hewed
them smooth. Was it not a beautiful wood? And what furniture did
m'sieu' desire?

Simpson had some little skill with his pencil--a real love for drawing
was one of the instincts which his austere obsessions had crushed out
of him. He revolved several styles in his mind, decided at length on
the simplest, and drew his designs on a ragged scrap of wrapping
paper, while the carpenter, leaning down from his chair by the door,
watched him, smoking, and now and then fingering the leather pouch
about his neck. Simpson, looking up occasionally to see that his
sketch was understood, could not keep his eyes away from the
pouch--whatever it was, it was not a scapular. He did not ask about
it, though he wanted to; curiosity, he had heard, should be repressed
when one is dealing with barbarians. But he knew that that was not his
real reason for not asking.

"But it is easy," said the carpenter, picking up the paper and
examining it. "And the seats of the chairs shall be of white hide, is
it not?"

Simpson assented. He did not leave the shop at o