I done kissed one of dem yaller gals, Marse Dave. Yass'r, I done kissed
M'lisse."

"Do you think Melisse would do something for you if you asked her?" I
inquired.

Benjy seemed hurt.

"Marse Dave--" he began reproachfully.

"Very well, then," I interrupted, taking the letter from my pocket,
"there is a lady who is ill here, Mrs. Clive--"

I paused, for a new look had come into Benjy's eyes. He began that
peculiar, sympathetic laugh of the negro, which catches and doubles on
itself, and I imagined that a new admiration for me dawned on his face.

"Yass'r, yass, Marse Dave, I reckon M'lisse 'll git it to her 'thout any
one tekin' notice."

I bit my lips.

"If Mrs. Clive receives this within an hour, Melisse shall have one
piastre, and you another. There is an answer."

Benjy took the note, and departed nimbly to find Melisse, while I paced
up and down in my uneasiness as to the outcome of the experiment. A
quarter of an hour passed, half an hour, and then I saw Benjy coming
through the trees. He stood before me, chuckling, and drew from his
pocket a folded piece of paper. I gave him the two piastres, warned him
if his master or any one inquired for me that I was taking a walk, and
bade him begone. Then I opened the note.

"I will meet you at the bayou, at seven this evening. Take the path that
leads through the garden."

I read it with a catch of the breath, with a certainty that the
happiness of many people depended upon what I should say at that
meeting. And to think of this and to compose myself a little, I made my
way to the garden in search of the path, that I might know it when the
time came. Entering a gap in the hedge, I caught sight of the shaded
seat under the tree which had been the scene of our first meeting with
Antoinette, and I hurried past it as I crossed the garden. There were
two openings in the opposite hedge, the one through which Nick and I had
come, and another. I took the second, and with little difficulty
found the path of which the note had spoken. It led through a dense,
semi-tropical forest in the direction of the swamp beyond, the way being
well beaten, but here and there jealously crowded by an undergrowth
of brambles and the prickly Spanish bayonet. I know not how far I had
walked, my head bent in thought, before I felt the ground teetering
under my feet, and there was the bayou. It was a narrow lane of murky,
impenetrable water, shaded now by the forest wall. Imaged on its
amb