them scanning the bent brows,
the smooth bronzed cheek, the purposeful mouth, and the unusual
length of dark eyelashes that gave its charm to the whole face; and
she saw them quickly withdrawn whenever the face with those lashes was
lifted and an unsuspecting smile of young companionship broke slowly
about the relaxing lips and the soft, deep-curtained eyes. No; Claude
little knew what he was doing. Neither did Marguerite. But, aside from
her, what was his occupation? I will explain.

About five weeks earlier than this, a passenger on an eastward-bound
train of Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railway stood at the rear door
of the last coach, eying critically the track as it glided swiftly
from under the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The coach
was nearly empty. No one was near him save the brakeman, and by and by
he took his attention from the track and let it rest on this person.
There he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face before, or
why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead,
and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight
through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and
axe-strokes--heard but unseen--slashing through them only a few feet
away? Suddenly he knew.

"Wasn't it your father," he said, "who was my guide up Bayou des
Acadiens and Blind River the time I made the survey in that big swamp
north of Grande Pointe? Isn't your name Claude St. Pierre?" And
presently they were acquainted.

"You know I took a great fancy to your father. And you've been clear
through the arithmetic twice? Why, see here; you're just the sort of
man I--Look here; don't you want to learn to be a surveyor?" The
questioner saw that same ambition which had pleased him so in the
father, leap for joy in the son's eyes.

An agreement was quickly reached. Then the surveyor wandered into
another coach, and nothing more passed between them that day save one
matter, which, though trivial, has its place. When the surveyor
returned to the rear train, Claude was in a corner seat gazing
pensively through the window and out across the wide, backward-flying,
purpling green cane-fields of St. Mary, to where on the far left the
live-oaks of Bayou Teche seemed hoveringly to follow on the flank of
their whooping and swaggering railway-train. Claude turned and met the
stranger's regard with a faint smile. His new friend spoke first.

"Matters may turn out so that we can have y