eir levee; and the
great bend of the river itself, with the sun setting in unutterable
gorgeousness behind the distant, low-lying pecan groves of Nine-mile
Point, and the bronzed and purpled waters kissing the very crown of
the great turfed levee, down under whose land side the gardens blossom
and give forth their hundred perfumes and bird songs to the children
and lovers that haunt their winding alleys of oleander, jasmine,
laurestine, orange, aloe, and rose, the grove of magnolias and oaks,
and come out upon the levee's top as the sun sinks, to catch the
gentle breeze and see the twilight change to moonlight on the water.

One evening as I sat on one of the levee benches here, with one whose
I am and who is mine beside me, we noticed on the water opposite us,
and near the farther shore, a large skiff propelled with two pairs of
oars and containing, besides the two rowers, half a dozen passengers.

Then I remembered that I had seen the same craft when it was farther
down the stream. The river is of a typical character about here.
Coming around the upper bend, the vast current sweeps across to this,
the Carrollton side, and strikes it just above the gardens with an
incalculable gnawing, tearing power. Hence the very high levee here;
the farther back the levee builders are driven by the corroding waters
the lower the ground is under them, and the higher they must build to
reach the height they reached before. From Carrollton the current
rebounds, and swinging over to the other shore strikes it, boiling
like a witch's caldron, just above and along the place where you may
descry the levee lock of the Company Canal.

I knew the waters all about there, and knew that this skiff full of
passengers, some of whom we could see were women, having toiled
through the seething current below, was now in a broad eddy, and, if
it was about to cross the stream, would do so only after it had gone
some hundred yards farther up the river. There it could cross almost
with the current.

And so it did. I had forgotten it again, when presently it showed
itself with all its freight, silhouetted against the crimson sky. I
said quickly:

"I believe Bonaventure Deschamps is in that boat!"

I was right. The skiff landed, and we saw its passengers step ashore.
They came along the levee's crown towards us, "by two, by two."
Bonaventure was mated with a young Methodist preacher, who had been my
playmate in boyhood, and who lived here in Carrollt