ay, but at length Catou asked, "Why dat man
don't nevva come!"

"The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore," said Bonaventure, with a
look of old pain in his young face; "but I am ready, let him come or
let him come not."

"'Tain't no use wait no longer," said Catou; "jis well have yo' lil
show widout him."

"Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!"

Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. For
Bonaventure at once determined to make the affair more than an
examination. He set its date on the anniversary of the day when he had
come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared.
She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child,
beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can
be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not
to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school
knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament.

"Learn yo' lessons hard, chil'run; if the State Sup'inten'ent, even at
the last, you know"--Bonaventure could not believe that this important
outpost had been forgotten.

CHAPTER X.

CONSPIRACY.

About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox--G. W. Tarbox--was travelling on
horseback and touching from house to house of the great sugar-estates
of the river "coast," seeing the country and people, and allowing the
_elite_ to subscribe to the "Album of Universal Information."

One Sunday, resting at College Point, he was led by curiosity to
cultivate the acquaintance of three men who had come in from Grande
Pointe. One of them was Chat-oue. He could understand them, and make
them understand him, well enough to play _vingt et un_ with them the
whole forenoon. He won all their money, drank with them, and took
their five subscriptions, Chat-oue taking three--one for himself, one
for Catou, and one for Crebiche. There was no delivery of goods there
and then; they could not write; but they made their marks, and it was
agreed that when Mr. Tarbox should come along a few days later to
deliver the volumes, they were not to be received or paid for until
with his scholarly aid the impostor who pretended to teach English
education at Grande Pointe had been put to confusion and to flight.

"All right," said Tarbox; "all _right_. I'm the kind of State
Superintendent you want. I like an adventure; and if there's any thing
I just love, it's exposing a fraud! What day shal