he
took a fiendish delight in the composition of these. He would come out
on the gallery with ink and a blank sheet of paper and try to enlist my
help. He would insert the most ridiculous statements, as for instance,
"Davy is worse to-day, having bribed Lindy to give him a pint of Madeira
against my orders." Or, "Davy feigns to be sinking rapidly because he
wishes to have you back." Indeed, I was always in a torture of doubt to
know what the rascal had sent.

His company was most agreeable when he was recounting the many
adventures he had had during the five years after he had left New
Orleans and been lost to me. These would fill a book, and a most
readable book it would be if written in his own speech. His love for the
excitement of the frontier had finally drawn him back to the Cumberland
country near Nashville, and he had actually gone so far as to raise a
house and till some of the land which he had won from Darnley. It
was perhaps characteristic of him that he had named the place
"Rattle-and-Snap" in honor of the game which had put him in possession
of it, and "Rattle-and-Snap" it remains to this day. He was going back
there with Antoinette, so he said, to build a brick mansion and to live
a respectable life the rest of his days.

There was one question which had been in my mind to ask him, concerning
the attitude of Monsieur de St. Gre. That gentleman, with Madame, had
hurried back from Pointe Coupee at a message from the Vicomtesse, and
had gone first to Les Iles to see Antoinette. Then he had come, in spite
of the fever, to his own house in New Orleans to see Nick himself. What
their talk had been I never knew, for the subject was too painful to be
dwelt upon, and the conversation had been marked by frankness on both
sides. Monsieur de St. Gre was a just man, his love for his daughter was
his chief passion, and despite all that had happened he liked Nick. I
believe he could not wholly blame the younger man, and he forgave him.

Mrs. Temple, poor lady, had died on that first night of my illness,
and it was her punishment that she had not known her son or her son's
happiness. Whatever sins she had committed in her wayward life were
atoned for, and by her death I firmly believe that she redeemed him. She
lies now among the Temples in Charleston, and on the stone which marks
her grave is cut no line that hints of the story of these pages.

One bright morning, when Nick and I were playing cards, we heard some
o