an't help you to make a case against the
old man, and I'm not going to."

"We did not expect this disappointment, Mr. White."

"I can't help that, sir. No, sir; you had better not appoint any more
investigations. Somebody'll investigate himself into trouble. No, sir;
it isn't a threat, it is only my advice, but I warn you that whoever
takes the task in hand will rue it to his dying day--which may be
hastened, too."

The President expressed himself "surprised."

"I don't care a rush," answered little White, wildly and foolishly. "I
don't care a rush if you are, sir. No, my nerves are not disordered; my
head's as clear as a bell. No, I'm _not_ excited." A Director remarked
that the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare.

"Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose to
cultivate old Poquelin's society you can have one, too."

"White," called a facetious member, but White did not notice. "White,"
he called again.

"What?" demanded White, with a scowl.

"Did you see the ghost?"

"Yes, sir; I did," cried White, hitting the table, and handing the
President a paper which brought the Board to other business.

The story got among the gossips that somebody (they were afraid to say
little White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheld
something appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnified
and distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletons
walking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the sign
of the cross.

Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to
venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the
house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which
they but half saw--half a sight was enough--sent them tearing back
through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they
fairly dropped down, and cried:

"Was it white?" "No--yes--nearly so--we can't tell--but we saw it." And
one could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had,
whatever it was.

"If that old rascal lived in the country we come from," said certain
Americains, "he'd have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn't
he, Sanders?"

"Well, now he just would."

"And we'd have rid him on a rail, wouldn't we?"

"That's what I allow."

"Tell you what you _could_ do." They were talking to some rollicking
Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity fo