ad become of
the gentle, young half brother, more than thirty years his junior, whom
once he seemed so fondly to love, but who, seven years ago, had
disappeared suddenly, once for all, and left no clew of his fate.

They had seemed to live so happily in each other's love. No father,
mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank,
impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious,
book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated
birds, one always on the wing, the other always in the nest.

There was no trait in Jean Marie Poquelin, said the old gossips, for
which he was so well known among his few friends as his apparent
fondness for his "little brother." "Jacques said this," and "Jacques
said that;" he "would leave this or that, or any thing to Jacques," for
"Jacques was a scholar," and "Jacques was good," or "wise," or "just,"
or "far-sighted," as the nature of the case required; and "he should ask
Jacques as soon as he got home," since Jacques was never elsewhere to be
seen.

It was between the roving character of the one brother, and the
bookishness of the other, that the estate fell into decay. Jean Marie,
generous gentleman, gambled the slaves away one by one, until none was
left, man or woman, but one old African mute.

The indigo-fields and vats of Louisiana had been generally abandoned as
unremunerative. Certain enterprising men had substituted the culture of
sugar; but while the recluse was too apathetic to take so active a
course, the other saw larger, and, at time, equally respectable profits,
first in smuggling, and later in the African slave-trade. What harm
could he see in it? The whole people said it was vitally necessary, and
to minister to a vital public necessity,--good enough, certainly, and so
he laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the public
regard.

One day old Jean Marie was about to start upon a voyage that was to be
longer, much longer, than any that he had yet made. Jacques had begged
him hard for many days not to go, but he laughed him off, and finally
said, kissing him:

"_Adieu, 'tit frere_."

"No," said Jacques, "I shall go with you."

They left the old hulk of a house in the sole care of the African mute,
and went away to the Guinea coast together.

Two years after, old Poquelin came home without his vessel. He must have
arrived at his house by night. No one saw him come. No one saw "his
little broth