y, her attention
still held by the picture.

Miss Biglow shook her head. "There is a sort of feud between the swamp
people and the farmers around here. And neither side is wholly to be
believed in their estimation of the other. Jeems isn't dishonest, and
neither are a great many of the muskrat hunters. In the early days all
kinds of outlaws and wanted men fled into the swamps and lived there
with the hunters. One or two desperate men gave the whole of the swamp
people a bad name and it has stuck. They are a strange folk back there
in the fur country.

"Some are Cajuns, descendants of exiles from Evangeline's country; some
are Creoles who took to that way of life after the Civil War ruined
them. There's many a barefooted boy or girl of the swamps who bears a
name that was once honored at the Court of France or Spain. And there
are Americans of the old frontier stock who came down river with Andrew
Jackson's army from the wilds of Tennessee and the Indian country. It's
a strange mixture, and once in a while you find a person like Jeems. He
speaks the uneducated jargon of his people but he reads and writes
French and English perfectly. He has studied under Pere Armand until he
has a classical education such as was popular for Creole boys of good
family some fifty years ago. Pere Armand is an old man now, but he is as
good an instructor as he is a priest.

"Jeems wants to make something of himself. He argues logically that the
swamp has undeveloped resources which might save its inhabitants from
the grinding poverty which is slowly destroying them. And it is Jeems'
hope that he can discover some of the swamp secrets when he is fitted by
training to do so."

"Who is he?" Val asked. "Is Jeems his first or last name?"

"His last. I have never heard his given name. He is very reticent about
his past, though I do know that he is an orphan. But he is of Creole
descent and he does have breeding as well as ambition. Unfortunately he
had quite an unpleasant experience with a boy who was visiting the
Harrisons last summer. The visitor accused Jeems of taking a fine rifle
which was later discovered right where the boy had left it in his own
canoe. Jeems has a certain pride and he was turned against all the
plantation people. His attitude is unfortunate because he longs so for a
different sort of life and yet has no contact with young people except
those of the swamp. I think he is beginning to trust me, for he will
come in the m