,
but his heart failed him; and when Bonaventure asked what, then, it
was, he replied:

"Aw, dey don't got no time. Time run so fas',--run like a scared dog.
I dunno fo' w'at dey make dat time run so fas' dat way."

"O my friend," cried the young schoolmaster, leaping from his chair,
"say not that! If God did not make time to p'oceed with rapidness, who
would ever do his best?"

It was such lessons as this that made the children--Crebiche among
them--still gather round the humble master and love to grasp his hand.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE AND DUTY.

Time ran fast. The seasons were as inexorable at Grande Pointe as
elsewhere. But there was no fierceness in them. The very frosts were
gentle. Slowly and kindly they stripped the green robes from many a
tree, from many a thicket ejected like defaulting tenants the blue
linnet, the orchard oriole, the nonpareil, took down all its leafy
hangings and left it open to the winds and rain of December. The wet
ponies and kine turned away from the north and stood in the slanting
storm with bowed heads. The great wall of cypress swamp grew spectral.
But its depths, the marshes far beyond sight behind them, and the
little, hidden, rushy lakes, were alive with game. No snake crossed
the path. Under the roof, on the galerie, the wheel hummed, the loom
pounded; inside, the logs crackled and blazed on the hearth; on the
board were venison, mallard, teal, rice-birds, _sirop de baterie_, and
_quitte_; round the fireside were pipes, pecans, old stories, and the
Saturday-night contra-dance; and every now and then came sounding on
the outer air the long, hoarse bellow of some Mississippi steamer,
telling of the great world beyond the tree-tops, a little farther than
the clouds and nearer than the stars.

Christmas passed, and New Year--time runs so fast! Presently yonder
was 'Mian himself, spading a piece of ground to sow his tobacco-seed
in; then Catou and his little boy of twenty-five doing likewise; and
then others all about the scattered village. Then there was a general
spreading of dry brush over the spaded ground, then the sweet, clean
smell of its burning, and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing,
its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to each other
again in every wet place, the grass began to freshen, and almost in
the calendar's midwinter the smiles of spring were wreathing
everywhere.

What of the schoolmaster and the children? Much, much! The good w