eir compass,
near at hand, the shady garden full of rare and beautiful flowers;
farther away broad fields of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of
the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a dark belt of cypress forest.

The master was old Colonel De Charleu,--Jean Albert Henri Joseph De
Charleu-Marot, and "Colonel" by the grace of the first American
governor. Monsieur,--he would not speak to any one who called him
"Colonel,"--was a hoary-headed patriarch. His step was firm, his form
erect, his intellect strong and clear, his countenance classic, serene,
dignified, commanding, his manners courtly, his voice musical,
--fascinating. He had had his vices,--all his life; but had borne them,
as his race do, with a serenity of conscience and a cleanness of mouth
that left no outward blemish on the surface of the gentleman. He had
gambled in Royal Street, drunk hard in Orleans Street, run his adversary
through in the duelling-ground at Slaughter-house Point, and danced and
quarrelled at the St. Philippe-street-theatre quadroon balls. Even now,
with all his courtesy and bounty, and a hospitality which seemed to be
entertaining angels, he was bitter-proud and penurious, and deep down in
his hard-finished heart loved nothing but himself, his name, and his
motherless children. But these!--their ravishing beauty was all but
excuse enough for the unbounded idolatry of their father. Against these
seven goddesses he never rebelled. Had they even required him to defraud
old De Carlos--

I can hardly say.

Old De Carlos was his extremely distant relative on the Choctaw side.
With this single exception, the narrow thread-like line of descent from
the Indian wife, diminished to a mere strand by injudicious alliances,
and deaths in the gutters of old New Orleans, was extinct. The name, by
Spanish contact, had become De Carlos; but this one surviving bearer of
it was known to all, and known only, as Injin Charlie.

One thing I never knew a Creole to do. He will not utterly go back on
the ties of blood, no matter what sort of knots those ties may be. For
one reason, he is never ashamed of his or his father's sins; and for
another,--he will tell you--he is "all heart!"

So the different heirs of the De Charleu estate had always strictly
regarded the rights and interests of the De Carloses, especially their
ownership of a block of dilapidated buildings in a part of the city,
which had once been very poor property, but was beginning t