Zoséphine had consented; and though Mr. Tarbox had soon after gone upon his comnercial travels, he had effected the purchase by correspondence, little thinking that the irst news he should hear on returning to New Orleans would be that the remotely anticiated "break" had just occurred.

And now, could and would the breach be losed, or must all Barataria soon be turned nto, and remain for months, a navigable yelHow sea? This, Claude knew, was what he must asten to the crevasse to discover, and return as romptly to report upon, let his heart-strings raw as they might towards the studio in Caondelet street and the Christian Women's Exchange.

XVI.

THE OUTLAW AND THE FLOOD.

WHAT suffering it costs to be a coward! Some days before the crevasse occurred, he whom we know as the pot-hunter stood again on he platform of that same little railway station whence we once saw him vanish at sight of Bonaventure Deschamps. He had never venured there since, until now. But there was a lew station-agent.

His Indian squaw was dead. A rattlesnake ad given her its fatal sting, and the outcast, reading all men and the coroner not the least, ad, silently and alone, buried her on the rairie.

The train rolled up to the station again as before. Claude's friend, the surveyor, stepped off with a cigar in his mouth, to enjoy in the rain's momentary stay the delightful air that came across the open prairie. The pot-hunter, who had got rid of his game, ventured near is former patron. It might be the engineer could give him work whereby to earn a day's eady money. He was not disappointed. The engineer told him to come in a day or two, by the waterways the pot-hunter knew so well, cross the swamps and prairies to Bayou Terrebonne and the little court-house town of Houma. And then he added:

"I heard this morning that somebody had been buying the swamp land all around you out on Lake Cataouaché. Is it so ?"

The Acadian looked vacant and shook his head. "Yes," said the other, "a Madame Beausoeil, or somebod- What's the matter?" "All aboard!" cried the train conductor. "The fellow turned pale," said the surveyor as he resumed his seat in the smoking-car and the landscape began again to whirl by. The pot-hunter stood for a moment, and then slowly, as if he stole away from some sleeping enemy, left the place. Alarm went

with him like an attendant ghost. A thousand times that day, in the dark swamp, on the wide prairie, or under his rush-thatch on the lakeside, he tortured himself with one question: Why had she-Zoséphine-reached away out from Carancro to buy the uncultivable and primeval wilderness round about his lonely hiding-place? Hour after hour the inexplicable problem seemed to draw near and nearer to him, a widening, tightening, dreamlike terror, that, as it came, silently pointed its finger of death at him. He was glad enough to leave his cabin next day in his small, swift pirogueshot-gun, ax, and rifle his only companions for Terrebonne.

It chanced to be noon of the day following when he glided up the sunny Terrebonne towards the parish seat. The shores of the stream have many beauties, but the Acadian's eyes were alert to anything but them. The deepgreen, waxen-leaved casino hedges; the hedges of Cherokee rose, and sometimes of rose and casino mingled; the fields of corn and sugarcane; the quaint, railed floating bridges lying across the lazy bayou; the orange groves of aged, giant trees, their dark-green boughs grown all to a tangle with well-nigh the density of a hedge, and their venerable trunks hairy with green-gray lichens; the orange-trees again in the door-yards, with neat pirogues set upon racks under their deep shade; the indescribable floods of sunlight and caverns of shadow; the clear brown depths beneath his own canoe; or at the bottom the dark, waving, green-brown tresses of water-weeds these were naught to him.

But the human presence was much; and once, when just ahead of him he espied a young sun-bonneted woman crouching in the pouring sunshine beyond the sod of the bayou's bank, itself but a few inches above the level of the stream, on a little pier of one plank pushed out among the flags and reeds, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle, he stopped the dip of his canoe-paddle and gazed, with growing trepidation and slackening speed. At the outer end of the plank the habitual dip of the bucket had driven aside the water-lilies, and made a round glassy space that reflected all but perfectly to him her busy young downcast visage.

"How like 'Just then she lifted her head. He started as though his boat had struck a snag. How like. how terribly like to that young Zoséphine whose ill-concealed scorn he had so often felt in days—in years-long gone, at Carancro ! This was not and could not be the same-lacked half the necessary years; and yet in the joy of his relief he answered her bow with a question: Whose was yonder house?

She replied, in the same Acadian French in which she was questioned, that there dwelt or had dwelt, and about two weeks ago had died, "Monsieur Robichaux." The pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, his canoe shot on, and two hours later he walked with dust-covered feet into Houma.

The principal tavern there stands on that corner of the court-house square to which the swamper would naturally come first. Here he was to find the engineer. But as with slow, diffident step he set one foot upon the corner of the threshold, there passed quickly by him and out towards the court-house two personsone a man of a county court-room look and with a handful of documents, and the other a woman whom he knew at a glance. Her skirts swept his ankles as he shrank in sudden and abject terror against the wall, yet she did not see him.

He turned and retreated the way he had come, nothing doubting that only by the virtue of a voodoo charm which he carried in his pocket he had escaped, for the time being, a plot laid for his capture. For the small, neatly robed form that you may still see disappearing within the court-house door, beside the limping figure of the probate clerk, is Zoséphine Beausoleil. She will finish the last pressing matter of the Robichaux succession now, in an hour or so, and be off on the little branch railway, whose terminus is here, for New Orleans.

When the pot-hunter approached Lake Cataouaché again he made on foot, under cover of rushes and leaves taller than he, a wide circuit and reconnoissance of his hut. While still a long way off he saw, lighted by the sunset rays, what he quickly recognized as a canoe drawn half out of the water almost at his door. He warily drew nearer. Presently he stopped and stood slowly and softly shifting his footing about on the oozy soil at a little point of shore only some fifty yards away from his cabin. His eyes, peering from the ambush, descried a man standing by the pirogue and searching with his gaze the wide distances that would soon be hidden in the abrupt fall of the southern night.

The pot-hunter knew him. Not by name, but by face. The day the outlaw saw Bonaventure at the little railway station, this man was with him. The name the pot-hunter did not know was St. Pierre.

The ambushed man shrank a step backward into his hiding-place. His rifle was in his hand and he noiselessly cocked it. He had not resolved to shoot; but a rifle is of no use until it is cocked. While he so stood another man came into view and to the first one's side. This one, too, he knew, despite

the soft hat that had taken the place of the silk one; for this was Tarbox. The Acadian was confirmed in his conviction that the surveyor's invitation for him to come to Houma was part of a plot to entrap him.

While he still looked the two men got into the canoe and St. Pierre paddled swiftly away. The pot-hunter let down the hammer of his gun, shrank away again, turned and hurried through the tangle, regained his canoe, and paddled off. The men's departure from the cabin was, in his belief, a ruse. But he knew how by circuits and short cuts to follow after them unseen, and this he did until he became convinced that they were fairly in the Company Canal and gliding up its dark colonnade in the direction whence they had evidently come. Then he returned to his cabin and with rifle cocked and with slow, stealthy step entered it, and in headlong haste began to prepare to leave it for a long hiding-out.

He knew every spot of land and water for leagues around, as a bear or a fox would know the region about his den. He had in mind now a bit of dry ground scarce fifty feet long or wide, deeply hidden in the swamp to the north of this lake. How it had ever happened that this dry spot, lifted two or three feet above the low level around it, had been made, whether by some dumb force of nature or by the hand of men yet more untamable than he, had never crossed his thought. It was beyond measure of more value to him to know, by what he had seen growing on it season after season, that for many a long year no waters had overflowed it. In the lake, close to his hut, lay moored his small centerboard lugger, and into this he presently threw his few appli ances and supplies, spread sail, and skimmed away, with his pirogue towing after.

His loaded rifle lay within instant reach. By choice he would not have harmed any living creature that men call it wrong to injure; but to save himself, not only from death, but from any risk of death, rightful or wrongful, he would, not through courage, but in the desperation of frantic cowardice, have killed a hundred men, one by one.

By this time it was night; and when first the lugger and, after it was hidden away, the pirogue, had carried him up a slender bayou as near as they could to the point he wished to reach, he had still to drag the loaded pi rogue no small distance through the dark, of ten wet, and almost impenetrable woods. He had taken little rest and less sleep in his late journeyings, and when at length he cast himself down before his fire of dead fagots on the raised spot he had chosen, he slept heavily. He felt safe from man's world, at least for the night.

Only one thing gave him concern as he lay own. It was the fact that when, with the ld woods-habit strong on him, he had aproached his selected camping-ground, with ach wariness of movement as the dragging irogue would allow, he had got quite in sight it before a number of deer on it bounded way. He felt an unpleasant wonder to know that their unwilling boldness might signify. He did not awake to replenish his fire until ere were only a few live embers shining dimly his feet. He rose to a sitting posture; and that same moment there came a confusion sound a trampling through bushes—that oze his blood and robbed his open throat of wer to cry. The next instant he knew it as but those same deer. But the first intellient thought brought a new fear. These most nid of creatures had made but a few leaps id stopped. He knew what that meant! As leaped to his feet the deer started again d he heard, to his horror,-where the ground id been dry and caked when he lay down,e plash of their feet in water.

Trembling, he drew his boots on, made and ghted a torch, and in a moment was dragng his canoe after him in the direction of the gger. Presently his steps, too, were plashing. le stooped, waved the torch low across the ater's surface, and followed the gleam with S scrutiny. But he did so not for any doubt at he would see, as he did, the yellow flood the Mississippi. He believed, as he believed existence, that his pursuers had let the river upon the swamp, ruin whom they might, drive him from cover.

Presently he stepped into the canoe, cast is torch into the water, took his paddle, and ided unerringly through a darkness and a ild tangle of undergrowth, large and small, here you or I could not have gone ten yards ithout being lost. He emerged successfully om the forest into the open prairie, and, under sky whose stars told him it would soon be ay, glided on down the little bayou lane, bereen walls of lofty rushes, up which he had me in the evening, and presently found the gger as he had left her, with her light mast own, hidden among the brake canes that asked a little cove.

The waters were already in the prairie. As e boarded the little vessel at the stern, a racDon waddled in noiseless haste over the bow, ad splashed into the wet covert of reeds beond. If only to keep from sharing his quarrs with all the refuge-hunting vermin of the oisome wilderness, the one human must move n. He turned the lugger's prow towards the ke, and spread her sails to the faint, cool reeze. But when day broke the sail was gone. Far and wide lay the pale green leagues of

reeds and bulrushes, with only here and there a low willow or two beside some unseen lagoon, or a sinuous band of darker green where round rushes and myrtle bushes followed the shore of some hidden bayou. The waters of the lake were gleaming and crinkling in tints of lilac and silver stolen from the air, and away to the right, and yet farther to the left, stood the dark phalanxes of cypress woods.

Thus had a thousand mornings risen on the scene in the sight of the outlaw. Numberless birds fluttered from place to place, snatching their prey, caroling, feeding their young, chattering, croaking, warbling, and swinging on the bending rush. But if you looked again, strange signs of nature's mute anguish began to show. On every log or bit of smaller drift that rain-swollen bayous had ever brought from the forest and thrown upon their banks some wild tenant of the jungle, hare or weasel, cat, otter, or raccoon, had taken refuge, sometimes alone, but oftener sharing it, in common misery and silent truce, with deadly foes. For under all that expanse of green beauty, the water, always abundant, was no longer here and there, but everywhere.

See yonder reed but a few yards away. What singular dark enlargement of stem is that near its top, that curious spiral growth? Growth! It is a great serpent that has climbed and twined himself there, and is holding on for the life he loves as we love ours. And see! On a reed near by him, another; and a little farther off, another; and another

and another! Where were our eyes until now? The surface of the vast brake, as far as one can see such small things, is dotted with like horrid burdens. And somewhere in this wild desolation, in this green prospect of a million deaths waiting in silence alike for harmful and harmless creatures, one man is hiding from all mankind.

XVII.

WELL HIDDEN.

Of all the teeming multitudes of the human world, the pot-hunter knows not one soul who is on his side; not one whom he dare let see his face or come between him and a hiding-place. The water is rising fast. He dare not guess how high it will come; but rise as it may, linger at its height as it may, he will not be driven out. In his belief a hundred men are ready, at every possible point where his foot could overstep the line of this vast inundation, to seize him and drag him to the gallows. Ah, the gallows! Not being dead - not God's anger — not eternal burnings; but simply facing death! The gallows! The tree above his head-the rope around

When at dawn of the fifth day he again looked for cover in the prairie the water was too high to allow him concealment, and he sought the screen of some willows that fringed the edge of the swamp forest, anchoring in a few rods' width of open water between them and the woods. He did not fear to make, on the small hearth of mud and ashes he had improvised in his lugger, the meager fire needed to prepare his food. Its slender smoke quickly mingled with the hazy vapors and shadows of the swamp. As he cast his eye abroad he found nowhere any sign of human approach. Here and there the tops of the round rushes still stood three feet above the water, but their slender needles were scarcely noticeable. Far and near, over prairie as over lake, lay the unbroken yellow flood. There was no flutter of wings, no whistle of feathered mate to mate, no call of nestlings from the ruined nests. Except the hawk and vulture, the birds were gone. Untold thousands of dumb creatures had clung to life for a time, but now were devoured by birds of prey and by alligators, or were drowned. Thousands still lived on. Behind him in the swamp the wood-birds remained, the gray squirrel still barked and leaped from tree to tree, the raccoon came down to fish, the plundering owl still hid himself through the bright hours, and the chilled snake curled close in the warm folds of the hanging moss. Nine feet of water below. In earlier days, to the northward through the forest many old timbers rejected in railway construction or repair, with dead logs and limbs, had been drifted together by heavy rains and had gathered a covering of soil; canebrake, luxurious willow-bushes, and tough grasses had sprung up on them and bound them with their roots. These floating islands the flood, now covering the dense underbrush of the swamp, lifted on its free surface, and in its slow creep southward bore through the pillared

submerged prairies. Many a cowering deer, in those last few days, that had made some one of these green fragments of the drowned land a haven of despair, the human castaway left unharmed.

TO

Of all sentient creatures in that deluge he was suffering most. He was gaunt and haggard with watching. The thought of pursuit bursting suddenly around him now fastened permanently upon his imagination. He feared to sleep. From the direction of the open water surprise seemed impossible; but from the forest! what instant might it not ring with o the whoop of discovery, the many-voiced halting challenge, and the glint of loaded Winchester? And another fear had come. Many a man not a coward, and as used to the sight of serpents as this man, has never been able to be other than a coward concerning them. The pot-hunter held them in terror. It was from fear of them that he had lighted his torch the night of his bivouac in the swamp. Only a knowledge of their ordinary haunts and habits and the art of avoiding them had made the swamp and prairie life bearable. Now all was changed. They were driven from their dens. In the forest one dared not stretch forth the hand to lay it upon any tangible thing until a searching glance had failed to find the glittering eye and forked tongue that meant "Beware!" In the flooded prairie the willow-trees were loaded with the knotted folds of the moccasin, the rattlesnake, and I know not how many other sorts of deadly on only loathsome serpents. Some little creatures at the bottom of the water, feeding on the soft white part of the round rush near its root, every now and then cut a stem free from its base and let it spring to the surface and float away Often a snake had wrapped himself about the end above the water, and when this refuge gave way and drifted abroad he would cling for a time, until some less forlorn hope came in sight, and then swim for it. Thus scarce minute of the day passed, it seemed, but one, two, or three of these creatures, making for their fellow-castaway's boat, were turned away by nervous waving of arms. The nights had proved that they could not climb the lug ger's side, and when he was in her the canoe was laid athwart her gunwales; but at night he had to drop the bit of old iron that served for an anchor, and the very first night a large moccasin-not of the dusky kind described in books, but of that yet deadlier, black sort, an ell in length, which the swampers call the Congo - came up the anchor-rope. The castaway killed it with an oar; but after that who would have slept?

About sunset of the fifth day, though it was