-ed!"

It was so agreed. The debate did not cease at once, but it languished.
Catou thought he had made one strong point when he objected to
education as conducive to idle habits; but when the schoolmaster
hurled back the fact that communities the world over are industrious
just in proportion as they are educated, he was done. He did not know,
but when he confronted the assertion it looked so true that he could
not doubt it. He only said:

"Well, anyhow, I t'ink 'tain't no use Crebiche go school no mo'." But
when Bonaventure pleaded for the lad's continuance, that too was
agreed upon. The men departed.

"Crebiche," said the master, holding the boy's hand at parting, "ah!
Crebiche, if thou become not a good scholar"--and read a promise in
the boy's swimming eyes.

"Claude, Claude, I am at yo' mercy now." But the honest gaze of Claude
and the pressure of his small strong hand were a pledge. The grateful
master turned to Sidonie, and again, as of old, no Sidonie was there.

CHAPTER IX.

READY.

Summer came. The song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and
making the hoary cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives
and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless
enemy--earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, sawyer,
dragon-fly--from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for
him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for
him; standing upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all for
the luxury--not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The
mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark,
back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one
way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then
sitting up on an average half the night--sometimes the whole of it--at
his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth
below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the
weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the crow, and
all that brigand crew--busy times! All nature in glad, gay earnest.
Corn in blossom and rustling in the warm breeze; blackberries ripe;
morning-glories under foot; the trumpet-flower flaring from its dense
green vine high above on the naked, girdled tree; the cotton-plant
blooming white, yellow, and red in the field beneath; honey a-making
in the hives and hollow trees; butterflies and bees lingering in the
fields