Bayou Folk

on Red River was better known to the people of N

man to mend such damage as the war had left. His three sons were even less able than he had been to bear the weighty inheritance of debt that came to them with the dismantled plantation

sultory foothold upon the land which had been his and his forefathers'. But he too was given to wandering-within a radius, ho

re at the far end of this open stretch, and consisted of a long row of old and very crippled cabins. Directly back of these a dense wood grew, and held much mystery, and witchery of sound and shadow, an

long and broad and inviting; but it was well to know that the brick pillar was crumbling away under one corner, that the railing was insecure at another, and that still another had long ago been condemned as unsafe. But that, of course, was not the corner in which Wallace Offdean sat the day following his arrival at the Santien place. This one was comparatively secure. A gloire-de-Dijon, thick-leaved and charged with huge creamy bl

men' de fence', firs' one place, anudder; an' if it would n' be fer dem mule' of Lacroix-tonnerre! I don' wan' to talk 'bout dem mule'. But me,

, in some surprise; for he had

ach for his coat, which hung upon a peg near by. He was a small, square man, with mild, kindly face, brown and roughened from h

nwardly marveling that a little child should have ut

now it's hair raise' Euphrasie sence hair po' ma die', Mr. Offde'n. She teck dat li'le chile, an' raise it, sem lack she raisin' Ninette. But it's mo' 'an a year now Euphrasie say dat's all fool nonsense to leave me livin'

unced Nac