perceiving the need of being more specific as from Saint Louis. She
had guessed he was no Southerner. He had come to Mrs. Lafirme on the
part of himself and others with a moneyed offer for the privilege of
cutting timber from her land for a given number of years. The amount
named was alluring, but here was proposed another change and she felt
plainly called on for resistance.

The company which he represented had in view the erection of a sawmill
some two miles back in the woods, close beside the bayou and at a
convenient distance from the lake. He was not wordy, nor was he eager
in urging his plans; only in a quiet way insistent in showing points
to be considered in her own favor which she would be likely herself to
overlook.

Mrs. Lafirme, a clever enough business woman, was moved by no undue
haste to give her answer. She begged for time to think the matter
over, which Hosmer readily agreed to; expressing a hope that a
favorable answer be sent to him at Natchitoches, where he would await
her convenience. Then resisting rather than declining all further
hospitality, he again took his way through the scorching fields.

Therese wanted but time to become familiar with this further change.
Alone she went out to her beloved woods, and at the hush of mid-day,
bade a tearful farewell to the silence.

II

At the Mill.

David Hosmer sat alone in his little office of roughly fashioned pine
board. So small a place, that with his desk and his clerk's desk, a
narrow bed in one corner, and two chairs, there was scant room for a
man to more than turn himself comfortably about. He had just
dispatched his clerk with the daily bundle of letters to the
post-office, two miles away in the Lafirme store, and he now turned
with the air of a man who had well earned his moment of leisure, to
the questionable relaxation of adding columns and columns of figures.

The mill's unceasing buzz made pleasant music to his ears and stirred
reflections of a most agreeable nature. A year had gone by since Mrs.
Lafirme had consented to Hosmer's proposal; and already the business
more than gave promise of justifying the venture. Orders came in from
the North and West more rapidly than they could be filled. That
"Cypresse Funerall" which stands in grim majesty through the dense
forests of Louisiana had already won its just recognition; and
Hosmer's appreciation of a successful business venture was showing
itself in a little more pronounced