oss of the
mission chapel. Sosthene's small ground-story cottage, with garret
stairs outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm behind,
was not even on a highway nor on the edge of any rich _bas
fond_,--creek-bottom. It was _au large_,--far out across the smooth,
unscarred turf of the immense prairie, conveniently near one of the
clear circular ponds--_maraises_--which one sees of every size and in
every direction on the seemingly level land. Here it sat, as still as
a picture, within its hollow square of China-trees, which every third
year yielded their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first
time--as easy to see the next time--as a bird sitting on her eggs.
Only the practised eye could read aright the infrequent obscure signs
of previous travel that showed the way to it,--sometimes no more than
the occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or hoofs
where the route led into or across the _coolees_--rivulets--that from
_marais_ to _marais_ slipped southward toward the great marshes of the
distant, unseen Gulf.

When I say the parent of one of these two children and guardian of the
other was a man of note, I mean, for one thing, his house was painted.
That he was the owner of thousands of cattle, one need not mention,
for so were others who were quite inconspicuous, living in unpainted
houses, rarely seeing milk, never tasting butter; men who at call of
their baptismal names would come forth from these houses barefooted
and bareheaded in any weather, and, while their numerous progeny
grouped themselves in the doorway one behind another in inverse order
of age and stature, would either point out your lost way, or, quite as
readily as Sosthene, ask you in beneath a roof where the coffee-pot
never went dry or grew cold by day. Nor would it distinguish him from
them to say he had many horses or was always well mounted. It was a
land of horsemen. One met them incessantly; men in broad hats and dull
homespun, with thin, soft, untrimmed brown beards, astride of small
but handsome animals, in Mexican saddles, the girths and bridles of
plaited hair, sometimes a _pialle_ or _arriatte_--lasso, lariat--of
plaited rawhide coiled at the saddle-bow. "Adieu, Onesime"--always
adieu at meeting, the same as at parting. "Adieu, Francois; adieu,
Christophe; adieu, Lazare;" and they with their gentle, brown-eyed,
wild-animal gaze, "Adjieu."

What did make Sosthene notable was the quiet thing we call thrift,
mad