though Mr. Tarbox had soon after gone upon his commercial travels,
he had effected the purchase by correspondence, little thinking that
the first news he should hear on returning to New Orleans would be
that the remotely anticipated "break" had just occurred.

And now, could and would the breach be closed, or must all Barataria
soon be turned into, and remain for months, a navigable yellow sea?
This, Claude knew, was what he must hasten to the crevasse to
discover, and return as promptly to report upon, let his heart-strings
draw as they might towards the studio in Carondelet Street and the
Christian Women's Exchange.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD.

What suffering it costs to be a coward! Some days before the crevasse
occurred, he whom we know as the pot-hunter stood again on the
platform of that same little railway station whence we once saw him
vanish at sight of Bonaventure Deschamps. He had never ventured there
since, until now. But there was a new station agent.

His Indian squaw was dead. A rattlesnake had given her its fatal
sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the
least, had, silently and alone, buried her on the prairie.

The train rolled up to the station again as before. Claude's friend,
the surveyor, stepped off with a cigar in his mouth, to enjoy in the
train's momentary stay the delightful air that came across the open
prairie. The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured near
his former patron. It might be the engineer could give him work
whereby to earn a day's ready money. He was not disappointed. The
engineer told him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the
pot-hunter knew so well, across the swamps and prairies to Bayou
Terrebonne and the little court-house town of Houma. And then he
added:

"I heard this morning that somebody had been buying the swamp land all
around you out on Lake Cataouache. Is it so?"

The Acadian looked vacant and shook his head.

"Yes," said the other, "a Madame Beausoleil, or somebod--What's the
matter?"

"All aboard!" cried the train conductor.

"The fellow turned pale," said the surveyor, as he resumed his seat in
the smoking-car and the landscape began again to whirl by.

The pot-hunter stood for a moment, and then slowly, as if he stole
away from some sleeping enemy, left the place. Alarm went with him
like an attendant ghost. A thousand times that day, in the dark swamp,
on the wide prairie, or under