shrieked
Schmetz, this time in good English. "This corpse is not alive! Never
yet was he alive! Return, sons of perdition, and assist me to raise
him--may he fall upon your brain-pans of donkeys!"

As if that had been all that was needed, the last wavering workman
flung down his shovel and took to his heels, running like a rabbit
and roaring as he ran.

"Schmetz!" called a clear and peremptory voice. "Schmetz! what's the
matter over there?"

"Ah! It is Monsieur Jelnik!" bawled Schmetz. "_Nom de Dieu_,
Monsieur Jelnik, come with a great quickness! I have dug from the
earth the leetle boy of stone--you know him, _hein_? Those niggers,
_sacrement_! they think they have uncovered the deceased corpse, the
victim of Madame the late mistress, with which she made her spells
of a sorceress."

"What!" said the voice. "You've found the statue, Schmetz? Ask, my
good fellow, if it is permitted that I come and view it."

"Why, of course!" said I, quickly.

"Thank you," said the voice.

There had been a great space cleared in our garden, and on the edge
of this, in removing a stubborn gum-tree, the negroes had uncovered
what they supposed to be the body of one murdered. Upon our knees,
with Schmetz helping us, we were trying to tear away the rotten
coverings, and the dirt and mold. And there, beautiful despite the
stains disfiguring him, lay the boy Love. The marble pedestal from
which he had been removed lay near him. On the base, decipherable,
was the sculptor's name, and on one side, in small letters,
"_Brought from Italy, 1803, by R.H._"

"Why, he is perfect!" cried Alicia, joyfully. "Oh, who could have
been so stupid and so cruel as to hide away something so lovely?
Poor dear little god, aren't you glad to get out of that grave and
come back to the sun? Aren't you grateful, little god, that Sophy
and I came to Hynds House?"

And at that moment a tall, slim, dark-skinned young man walked up,
hands behind his back, and stood there regarding us with eyes as
clear and cool as mountain water when the sunlight is upon it and
golden flecks come and go in its brown depths. The exquisitely
aquiline features, the small black mustache, an indescribably proud
and high-bred ease and grace of manner and bearing, were oddly
exotic and even more oddly fascinating. His slenderness was as
strong as a tempered sword-blade, his quietness was trained power in
repose. And the hair of his head was so black that a purplish shadow
rested up