h time-worn boasts.

"I got de hang of him, and now I got to part! But de war will end, now
Honore have gone into it. His gran'fodder was such a fighter when de
British come to take de island, he turn' de cannon and blow de British
off. The gran'fodder of Honore was a fine man. He always keep de bes'
liquors and by wines on his sideboa'd."

When Honore had been gone twenty-four hours, and Jules was still idling
like a boy undriven by his task-master, leaving the boat to rock under
bare poles at anchor on the rise and fall of the water, Clethera went
into their empty house. It contained three rooms, and she laid violent
hands on male housekeeping. The service was almost religious, like
preparing linen for an altar. It comforted her unacknowledged anguish,
which increased rather than diminished, the unrest of which she resented
with all her stoic Indian nature.

Nets, sledge-harness, and Honore's every-day clothes hung on his
whitewashed wall. The most touching relic of any man is the hat he has
worn. Honore's cap crowned the post of his bed like a wraith. The room
might have been a young hermit's cell in a cave, or a tunnel in the
evergreens, it was so simple and bare of human appointments. Clethera
stood with the broom in one hand, and tipped forward a piece of broken
looking-glass on his shaving-shelf. A new, unforeseen Clethera, whom she
had never been obliged to deal with before, gave her a desperate, stony
stare out of a haggard face. She was young, her skin had not a line. But
it was as if she had changed places with her wrinkled grandmother, to
whom the expression of complacent maidenhood now belonged.

As Clethera propped the glass again in place, she heard Jules come in.
She resumed her sweeping with resolute strokes on the bare boards, which
would explain to his ear the necessity of her presence. He appeared at
the door, and it was Honore!

[Illustration: He appeared at the door 226]

It was Honore, shamefaced but laughing, back from the war within
twenty-four hours! Clethera heard the broom-handle strike the floor as
one hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor. She put her
palms together, without flying into his arms or even offering to shake
hands.

"You come back?" she cried out, her voice sharpened by joy.

"The war is end'," said Honore. "Peace is declare' yesterday!" He threw
his bundle down and looked fondly around the rough walls. "All de peop'
laugh at me because I go to war when