on. Not exactly at the forge in the
Lafittes' famous smithy, among the African Samsons, who, with their
shining black bodies bared to the waist, made the Rue St. Pierre ring
with the stroke of their hammers; but as a--there was no occasion to
mince the word in those days--smuggler.

Smuggler--patriot--where was the difference? Beyond the ken of a
community to which the enforcement of the revenue laws had long been
merely so much out of every man's pocket and dish, into the
all-devouring treasury of Spain. At this date they had come under a
kinder yoke, and to a treasury that at least echoed when the customs
were dropped into it; but the change was still new. What could a man be
more than Capitaine Lemaitre was--the soul of honor, the pink of
courtesy, with the courage of the lion, and the magnanimity of the
elephant; frank--the very exchequer of truth! Nay, go higher still: his
paper was good in Toulouse street. To the gossips in the gaming-clubs he
was the culminating proof that smuggling was one of the sublimer
virtues.

Years went by. Events transpired which have their place in history.
Under a government which the community by and by saw was conducted in
their interest, smuggling began to lose its respectability and to grow
disreputable, hazardous, and debased. In certain onslaughts made upon
them by officers of the law, some of the smugglers became murderers. The
business became unprofitable for a time until the enterprising
Lafittes--thinkers--bethought them of a corrective--"privateering."

Thereupon the United States Government set a price upon their heads.
Later yet it became known that these outlawed pirates had been offered
money and rank by Great Britain if they would join her standard, then
hovering about the water-approaches to their native city, and that they
had spurned the bribe; wherefore their heads were ruled out of the
market, and, meeting and treating with Andrew Jackson, they were
received as lovers of their country, and as compatriots fought in the
battle of New Orleans at the head of their fearless men, and--here
tradition takes up the tale--were never seen afterward.

Capitaine Lemaitre was not among the killed or wounded, but he was among
the missing.

CHAPTER IV.

THREE FRIENDS.

The roundest and happiest-looking priest in the city of New Orleans was
a little man fondly known among his people as Pere Jerome. He was a
Creole and a member of one of the city's leading families.