the disorder that gathered about her. Till Uncle Hiram came one day
with a respectful tender of sympathy, offered in the guise of a
reckless misquoting of Scripture--and with a grievance.

"Mistuss," he said, "I 'lowed 'twar best to come to de house an' tell
you; fur Massa he alluz did say 'Hi'urm, I counts on you to keep a eye
open endurin' my appersunce;' you ricollic, marm?" addressing an
expanse of black bordered cambric that veiled the features of his
mistress. "Things is a goin' wrong; dat dey is. I don't wants to name
no names 'doubt I'se 'bleeged to; but dey done start a kiarrin' de
cotton seed off de place, and dats how."

If Hiram's information had confined itself to the bare statement of
things "goin' wrong," such intimation, of its nature vague and
susceptible of uncertain interpretation, might have failed to rouse
Therese from her lethargy of grief. But that wrong doing presented as
a tangible abuse and defiance of authority, served to move her to
action. She felt at once the weight and sacredness of a trust, whose
acceptance brought consolation and awakened unsuspected powers of
doing.

In spite of Uncle Hiram's parting prediction "de cotton 'll be a goin'
naxt" no more seed was hauled under cover of darkness from
Place-du-Bois.

The short length of this Louisiana plantation stretched along Cane
River, meeting the water when that stream was at its highest, with a
thick growth of cotton-wood trees; save where a narrow convenient
opening had been cut into their midst, and where further down the pine
hills started in abrupt prominence from the water and the dead level
of land on either side of them. These hills extended in a long line of
gradual descent far back to the wooded borders of Lac du Bois; and
within the circuit which they formed on the one side, and the
irregular half circle of a sluggish bayou on the other, lay the
cultivated open ground of the plantation--rich in its exhaustless
powers of reproduction.

Among changes which the railroad brought soon after Jerome Lafirme's
death, and which were viewed by many as of questionable benefit, was
one which drove Therese to seek another domicile. The old homestead
that nestled to the hill side and close to the water's edge, had been
abandoned to the inroads of progressive civilization; and Mrs. Lafirme
had rebuilt many rods away from the river and beyond sight of the
mutilated dwelling, converted now into a section house. In building,
she avoided