er;" rumor whispered that he, too, had returned, but he had
never been seen again.

A dark suspicion fell upon the old slave-trader. No matter that the few
kept the many reminded of the tenderness that had ever marked his
bearing to the missing man. The many shook their heads. "You know he has
a quick and fearful temper;" and "why does he cover his loss with
mystery?" "Grief would out with the truth."

"But," said the charitable few, "look in his face; see that expression
of true humanity." The many did look in his face, and, as he looked in
theirs, he read the silent question: "Where is thy brother Abel?" The
few were silenced, his former friends died off, and the name of Jean
Marie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideous
nursery fictions.

The man and his house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters
forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes
the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow
thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for a
moment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sport
in wanton haste to assail with their gibes the unoffending, withered old
man who, in rusty attire, sat in the stern of a skiff, rowed homeward by
his white-headed African mute.

"O Jean-ah Poquelin! O Jean-ah! Jean-ah Poquelin!"

It was not necessary to utter more than that. No hint of wickedness,
deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone of
mockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over another
in their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat,
while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling up
his brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, would pour forth
such an unholy broadside of French imprecation and invective as would
all but craze them with delight.

Among both blacks and whites the house was the object of a thousand
superstitions. Every midnight they affirmed, the _feu follet_ came out
of the marsh and ran in and out of the rooms, flashing from window to
window. The story of some lads, whose words in ordinary statements were
worthless, was generally credited, that the night they camped in the
woods, rather than pass the place after dark, they saw, about sunset,
every window blood-red, and on each of the four chimneys an owl sitting,
which turned his head three times round, and moaned and laughed with a
hu