w closer together as they gazed after the now-unheard train.
It melted to a point and disappeared, the stillness of forest and
prairie fell again upon the place, the soaring sun shone down, and
Claude St. Pierre was gone to seek his fortune.

CHAPTER III.

THE TAVERN FIRESIDE.

I call to mind a certain wild, dark night in November. St. Pierre lay
under his palmetto thatch in the forest behind Grande Pointe, and
could not sleep for listening to the wind, and wondering where his son
was, in that wild Texas norther. On the Mississippi a steamer, upward
bound, that had whistled to land at Belmont or Belle Alliance
plantation, seemed to be staying there afraid to venture away. Miles
southward beyond the river and the lands on that side, Lake des
Allemands was combing with the tempest and hissing with the rain.
Still farther away, on the little bayou and at the railway-station in
the edge of the swamp that we already know, and westward over the
prairie where Claude had vanished into the world, all life was hidden
and mute. And farther still, leagues and leagues away, the mad tempest
was riding the white-caps in Berwick's Bay and Grande Lake; and yet
beyond, beyond New Iberia, and up by Carancro, and around again by
St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, Grand Coteau, and Opelousas, and down
once more across the prairies of Vermilion, the marshes about Cote
Blanche Bay, and the islands in the Gulf, it came bounding, screaming,
and buffeting. And all the way across that open sweep from Mermentau
to Cote Gelee it was tearing the rain to mist and freezing it wherever
it fell, only lulling and warming a little about Joseph Jefferson's
Island, as if that prank were too mean a trick to play upon his
orange-groves.

In Vermilionville the wind came around every corner piercing and
pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was
still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of
some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without,
on horse or afoot, to be guided by its kindly glow.

At the corner of two streets quite away from the court-house square, a
white frame tavern, with a wooden Greek porch filling its whole
two-story front and a balcony built within the porch at the
second-story windows in oddest fashion, was glowing with hospitable
firelight. It was not nearly the largest inn of the place, nor the
oldest, nor the newest, nor the most accessible. There was no clink of