year ole; drivin' Marse Duplan's mules! W'at I gwine tell yo' pa?"
"Fu me, you kin tell 'im w'at you want. But you watch Nonomme. I done cook his rice an' set it 'side."
"Don't you bodda," replied Aunt Minty; "I got somepin heah fur my boy. I gwine 'ten' to him."
Lolotte had seen Aunt Minty put something out of sight when she came up, and made her produce it. It was a heavy fowl.
"Sence w'en you start raisin' Brahma chicken', you?" Lolotte asked mistrustfully.
"My, but you is a cu'ious somebody! Ev'ything w'at got fedders on its laigs is Brahma chicken wid you. Dis heah ole hen"—
"All de same, you don't got fur give dat chicken to eat to Nonomme. You don't got fur cook 'im in my house."
Aunt Minty, unheeding, turned to the house with blustering inquiry for her boy, while Lolotte drove away with great clatter.
She knew, notwithstanding her injunction, that the chicken would be cooked and eaten. Maybe she herself would partake of it when she came back, if hunger drove her too sharply.
"Nax' thing I'm goen be one rogue," she muttered; and the tears gathered and fell one by one upon her cheeks.
"It do look like one Brahma, Aunt Mint," remarked the small and weazened Jacques, as he watched the woman picking the lusty fowl.
"How ole is you?" was her quiet retort.
"I don' know, me."
"Den if you don't know dat much, you betta keep yo' mouf shet, boy."
Then silence fell, but for a monotonous chant which the woman droned as she worked. Jacques opened his lips once more.
"It do look like one o' Ma'me Duplan' Brahma, Aunt Mint."
"Yonda, whar I come f'om, befo' de wah"—
"Ole Kaintuck, Aunt Mint?"
"Ole Kaintuck."
"Dat ain't one country like dis yere, Aunt Mint?"
"You mighty right, chile, dat ain't no sech kentry as dis heah. Yonda, in Kaintuck, w'en boys says de word 'Brahma chicken,' we takes an' gags 'em, an' ties dar han's behines 'em, an' fo'ces 'em ter stan' up watchin' folks settin' down eatin' chicken soup."
Jacques passed the back of his hand across his mouth; but lest the act should not place sufficient seal upon it; he prudently stole away to go and sit beside Nonomme, and wait there as patiently as he could the coming feast.
And what a treat it was! The luscious soup—a great pot of it—golden yellow, thickened with the flaky rice that Lolotte had set carefully on the shelf. Each mouthful of it seemed to carry fresh blood into the veins and a new brightness into the eyes of the hungry children who ate of it.
And that was not all. The day brought abundance with it. Their father came home with glistening perch and trout that Aunt Minty broiled deliciously over glowing embers, and basted with the rich chicken fat.
"You see," explained old Sylveste, "w'en I git up to 's mo'nin' an' see it was cloudy, I say to me, 'Sylveste, w'en you go wid dat cotton, rememba you got no tarpaulin. Maybe it rain, an' de cotton was spoil. Betta you go yonda to Lafirme Lake, w'ere de trout was bitin' fas'er 'an mosquito, an' so you git a good mess fur de chil'en.' Lolotte—w'at she goen do yonda? You ought stop Lolotte, Aunt Minty, w'en you see w'at she was want to do."
"Did n' I try to stop 'er? Did n' I ax 'er, 'W'at I gwine tell yo' pa?' An' she 'low, 'Tell 'im to go hang hisse'f, de triflind ole rapscallion! I's de one w'at's runnin' dis heah fambly!'"
"Dat don' soun' like Lolotte, Aunt Minty; you mus' yaird 'er crooked; hein, Nonomme?"
The quizzical look in his good-natured features was irresistible. Nonomme fairly shook with merriment.
"My head feel so good," he declared. "I wish Lolotte would come, so I could tole 'er." And he turned in his bed to look down the long, dusty lane, with the hope of seeing her appear as he had watched her go, sitting on one of the cotton bales and guiding the mules.
But no one came all through the hot morning. Only at noon a broad-shouldered young negro appeared in view riding through the dust. When he had dismounted at the cabin door, he stood leaning a shoulder lazily against the jamb.
"Well, heah you is," he grumbled, addressing Sylveste with no mark of respect.
"Heah you is, settin' down like comp'ny, an' Marse Joe yonda sont me see if you was dead."
"Joe Duplan boun' to have his joke, him," said Sylveste, smiling uneasily.
"Maybe it look like a joke to you, but 't aint no joke to him, man, to have one o' his wagons smoshed to kindlin', an' his bes' team tearin' t'rough de country. You don't want to let 'im lay ban's on you, joke o' no joke."
"Malédiction!" howled Sylveste, as he staggered to his feet. He stood for one instant irresolute; then he lurched past the man and ran wildly down the lane. He might have taken the horse that was there, but he went tottering on afoot, a frightened look in his eyes, as if his soul gazed upon an inward picture that was horrible.
The road to the landing was little used. As Sylveste went he could readily trace the marks of Lolotte's wagon-wheels. For some distance they went straight along the road. Then they made a track as if a madman had directed their course, over stump and hillock, tearing the bushes and barking the trees on either side.
At each new turn Sylveste expected to find Lolotte stretched senseless upon the ground, but, there was never a sign of her.
At last he reached the landing, which was a dreary spot, slanting down to the river and partly cleared to afford room for what desultory freight might be left there from time to time. There were the wagon-tracks, clean down to the river's edge and partly in the water, where they made a sharp and senseless turn. But Sylveste found no trace of his girl.
"Lolotte!" the old man cried out into the stillness. "Lolotte, ma fille, Lolotte!" But no answer came; no sound but the echo of his own voice, and the soft splash of the red water that lapped his feet.
He looked down at it, sick with anguish and apprehension.
Lolotte had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her. After a few days it became the common belief that the girl had been drowned. It was thought that she must have been hurled from the wagon into the water during the sharp turn that the wheel-tracks indicated, and carried away by the rapid current.
During the days of search, old Sylveste's excitement kept him up. When it was over, an apathetic despair seemed to settle upon him.
Madame Duplan, moved by sympathy, had taken the little four-year-old Nonomme to the plantation Les Chêniers, where the child was awed by the beauty and comfort of things that surrounded him there. He thought always that Lolotte would come back, and watched for her every day; for they did not tell him the sad tidings of her loss.
The other two boys were placed in the temporary care of Aunt Minty; and old Sylveste roamed like a persecuted being through the country. He who had been a type of indolent content and repose had changed to a restless spirit.
When
