s nostrils, he
said, in a solemn whisper:

"He is a witch."

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other.

"You don't believe it? What you want to bet?" cried the interpreter,
jerking himself half up and thrusting out one arm while he bared it of
its coat-sleeve with the hand of the other. "What you want to bet?"

"How do you know?" asked the official.

"Dass what I goin' to tell you. You know, one evening I was shooting
some _grosbec_. I killed three, but I had trouble to fine them, it was
becoming so dark. When I have them I start' to come home; then I got to
pas' at Jean Poquelin's house."

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other, throwing his leg over the arm of his
chair.

"Wait," said the interpreter. "I come along slow, not making some
noises; still, still"--

"And scared," said the smiling one.

"_Mais_, wait. I get all pas' the 'ouse. 'Ah!' I say; 'all right!' Then
I see two thing' before! Hah! I get as cold and humide, and shake like a
leaf. You think it was nothing? There I see, so plain as can be (though
it was making nearly dark), I see Jean--Marie--Po-que-lin walkin' right
in front, and right there beside of him was something like a man--but
not a man--white like paint!--I dropp' on the grass from scared--they
pass'; so sure as I live 'twas the ghos' of Jacques Poquelin, his
brother!"

"Pooh!" said the listener.

"I'll put my han' in the fire," said the interpreter.

"But did you never think," asked the other, "that that might be Jack
Poquelin, as you call him, alive and well, and for some cause hid away
by his brother?"

"But there har' no cause!" said the other, and the entrance of third
parties changed the subject.

Some months passed and the street was opened. A canal was first dug
through the marsh, the small one which passed so close to Jean
Poquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road,
just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry.
Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle
roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant
undergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and the
flower-de-luce sprang up in the place of reeds; smilax and poison-oak
gave way to the purple-plumed iron-weed and pink spiderwort; the
bindweeds ran everywhere blooming as they ran, and on one of the dead
cypresses a giant creeper hung its green burden of foliage and lifted
its scarlet trumpets. Sparrows and red-birds fli