uld tell anybody, He would tell you!"

The priest smiled and rose.

"Do you think so? Well, leave me to think of it. I will ask Him."

"And He will tell you!" she replied. "And He will bless you!" She rose
and gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled. "I had such a strange
dream," she said, backing toward the door.

"Yes?"

"Yes. I got my troubles all mixed up with your sermon. I dreamed I made
that pirate the guardian of my daughter."

Pere Jerome smiled also, and shrugged.

"To you, Madame Delphine, as you are placed, every white man in this
country, on land or on water, is a pirate, and of all pirates, I think
that one is, without doubt, the best."

"Without doubt," echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawing
backward. Pere Jerome stepped forward and opened the door.

The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon the
threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting
from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair
where the hat had covered it and dark below, gently stroking back his
very soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while
Pere Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger
hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine's
eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor
were of white duck.

"Well, Pere Jerome," she said, in a hurried under-tone, "I am just going
to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!"

"Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, Madame
Carraze."

And as she departed, the priest turned to the new-comer and extended
both hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been
addressing the quadroone:

"Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!"

They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing
with the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often
mentioning Evariste and often Jean.

Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to Pere
Jerome's. His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar. She
passed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other,
her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the white
duck shoes passed out. She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonade
suit.

"Yes," the voice of Pere Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in the
door--"Ah! Madame--"

"I lef' my para_sol_