completely
covered in miles of streets. By two in the afternoon the flood was
coming into many of the houses. By three it was up at the door-sill on
which he stood. There it stopped.

He could do nothing but stand and look. Skiffs, canoes, hastily
improvised rafts, were moving in every direction, carrying the unsightly
chattels of the poor out of their overflowed cottages to higher ground.
Barrels, boxes, planks, hen-coops, bridge lumber, piles of straw that
waltzed solemnly as they went, cord-wood, old shingles, door-steps,
floated here and there in melancholy confusion; and down upon all still
drizzled the slackening rain. At length it ceased.

Richling still stood in the door-way, the picture of mute helplessness.
Yes, there was one other thing he could do; he could laugh. It would
have been hard to avoid it sometimes, there were such ludicrous
sights,--such slips and sprawls into the water; so there he stood in
that peculiar isolation that deaf people content themselves with, now
looking the picture of anxious waiting, now indulging a low, deaf man's
chuckle when something made the rowdies and slatterns of the street
roar.

Presently he noticed, at a distance up the way, a young man in a canoe,
passing, much to their good-natured chagrin, a party of three in a
skiff, who had engaged him in a trial of speed. From both boats a shower
of hilarious French was issuing. At the nearest corner the skiff party
turned into another street and disappeared, throwing their lingual
fireworks to the last. The canoe came straight on with the speed of a
fish. Its dexterous occupant was no other than Narcisse.

There was a grace in his movement that kept Richling's eyes on him, when
he would rather have withdrawn into the house. Down went the paddle
always on the same side, noiselessly, in front; on darted the canoe;
backward stretched the submerged paddle and came out of the water
edgewise at full reach behind, with an almost imperceptible swerving
motion that kept the slender craft true to its course. No rocking; no
rush of water before or behind; only the one constant glassy ripple
gliding on either side as silently as a beam of light. Suddenly, without
any apparent change of movement in the sinewy wrists, the narrow shell
swept around in a quarter circle, and Narcisse sat face to face with
Richling.

Each smiled brightly at the other. The handsome Creole's face was aglow
with the pure delight of existence.

"Well, Mistoo