d got it from the Englishman,--what then? Would she
get his money, or any of it? No, not if Camille knew men--especially white
men. For a quadroon woman to be true to herself and to her God was not the
kind of thing that white men--if he knew them--rewarded. But if the case
was not of that sort, and the relation was what he _hoped_ it was, and
according to his ideas of higher law it had a right to be, why, then, she
might reasonably hope for a good fat slice--if there should turn out,
after all, to be any fat to slice.

Thence arose the other question--had the Englishman any money? And if so,
was it much, or was it so little as to make it hardly worth while for the
Englishman to die early at all? You can't tell just by looking at a man or
his clothes. In fact, is it not astonishing how quietly a man--of the
quiet kind--can either save great shining stacks of money, or get rid of
all he makes as fast as he makes it? Isn't it astonishing? Being a cotton
buyer did not answer the question. He might be getting very large pay or
very small; or even none. Some men had got rich without ever charging
anything for their services. The cotton business those days was a
perfectly lovely business--so many shady by-paths and circuitous
labyrinths. Even in the law--why, sometimes even he, Camille Ducour, did
not charge anything. But that was not often.

Only one thing was clear--there ought to be a written will. For Attalie
Brouillard, f. w. c, could by no means be or become the Englishman's
legal heir. The law mumbled something about "one-tenth," but for the rest
answered in the negative and with a black frown. Her only chance--but we
shall come to that.

All in a tremor one day a messenger, Attalie's black slave girl, came to
Camille to say that her mistress was in trouble! in distress! in deeper
distress than he could possibly imagine, and in instant need of that wise
counsel which Camille Ducour had so frequently offered to give.

"I am busy," he said, in the Creole-negro _patois_, "but--has anybody--has
anything happened to--to anybody in Madame Brouillard's house?"

"Yes," the messenger feared that "_ce Michie qui pote soulie jaune_--that
gentleman who wears yellow shoes--is ill. Madame Brouillard is hurrying to
and fro and crying."

"Very loud?"

"No, silently; yet as though her heart were breaking."

"And the doctor?" asks Camille, as he and the messenger are hurrying side
by side out of Exchange alley into Bienville s