Chapter II (1)

Quackalina thought she had laid twice as many as ten eggs in the nest, but she could not be quite sure, and neither could Sir Sooty, though he thought so, too.

Very few poetic people are good at arithmetic, and even fine mathematicians are said to forget how to count when they are in love.

Certain it is, however, that when Quackalina finally decided to be satisfied to begin sitting, there were exactly ten eggs in the nest--just enough for her to cover well with her warm down and feathers.

"Sitting-time" may seem stupid to those who are not sitting; but Quackalina's breast was filled with a gentle content as she sat, day by day, behind the golden-rod, and blinked and reflected and listened for the dear "paddle, paddle" of Sir Sooty's feet, and his loving "qua', qua'"--a sort of caressing baby-talk that he had adopted in speaking to her ever since she had begun her long sitting.

Quackalina was a patient little creature, and seldom left her nest, so that when she did so for a short walk in the glaring sun, she was apt to be dizzy and to see strange spots before her eyes. But this would all pass away when she got back to her cozy nest in the cool shade.

But one day it did not pass away--it got worse, or, at least, she thought it did. Instead of ten eggs in the nest she seemed to see twenty, and they were of a strange, dull color, and their shape seemed all wrong. She blinked her eyes nineteen times, and even rubbed them with her web-feet, so that she might not see double, but it was all in vain. Before her dazzled eyes twenty little pointed eggs lay, and when she sat upon them they felt strange to her breast. And then she grew faint and was too weak even to call Sir Sooty, but when he came waddling along presently, he found her so pale around the bill that he made her put out her tongue, and examined her symptoms generally.

Sir Sooty was not a regular doctor, but he was a very good quack, and she believed in him, which, in many cases, is the main thing.

So when he grew so tender that his words were almost like "qu, qu," and told her that she had been confined too closely and was threatened with _foie gras_, she only sighed and closed her eyes, and, keeping her fears to herself, hoped that the trouble was all in her eyes indeed--or her liver.

Now the sad part of this tale is that the trouble was not with poor little Quackalina's eyes at all. It was in the nest. The same farmer's boy who had kept her sitting of eggs down to ten by taking out one every day until poor Quackalina's patience was worn out--the same boy who had not used her as a decoy only because he wanted her to stay at home and raise little decoy-ducks--this boy it was who had now chosen to take her ten beautiful eggs and put them under a guinea-hen, and to fetch the setting of twenty guinea eggs for Quackalina to hatch out.

He did this just because, as he said, "That old black duck 'll hatch out as many eggs again as a guinea-hen will, an' the guinea 'll cover her ten eggs _easy_. I'm goin' to swap 'em." And "swap 'em" he did.

Nobody knows how the guinea-hen liked her sitting, for none but herself and the boy knew where her nest was hidden in a pile of old rubbish down by the cow-pond.

When a night had passed, and a new day showed poor Quackalina the twenty little eggs actually under her breast--eggs so little that she could roll two at once under her foot--she did not know what to think. But like many patient people when great sorrows come, she kept very still and never told her fears.

She had never seen a guinea egg before in all her life. There were birds' nests in some of the reeds along shore, and she knew their little toy eggs. She knew the eggs of snakes, too, and of terrapins, or "tarrups," as they are called by the farmer folk along the bay.

When first she discovered the trouble in the nest she thought of these, and the very idea of a great procession of little turtles starting out from under her some fine morning startled her so that her head lay limp against the golden-rod for fully thirteen seconds. Then she got better, but it was not until she had taken a nip at the pepper-grass that she was sufficiently warmed up to hold up her head and think. And when she thought, she was comforted. These dainty pointed eggs were not in the least like the soft clumsy "double-enders" that the turtles lay in the sand. Besides, how could turtle-eggs have gotten there anyway? How much easier for one head to go wrong than twenty eggs.

She chuckled at the very folly of her fears, and nestling down into the place, she soon began to nod. And presently she had a funny, funny dream, which is much too long to go into this story, which is a great pity, for her dream is quite as interesting as the real story, although it is not half so true.

Sitting-time, after this, seemed very long to Quackalina, but after a while she began to know by various little stirrings under her downy breast that it was almost over. At the first real movement against her wing she felt as if everything about her was singing and saying, "mother! mother!" and bowing to her.

Even the pepper-grass nodded and the golden-rod, and careless roosters as they passed _seemed_ to lower their combs to her and to forget themselves, just for a minute. And a great song was in her own bosom--a great song of joy--and although the sound that came from her beautiful coral bill was only a soft "qua', qua'," to common ears, to those who have the finest hearing it was full of a heavenly tenderness. But there was a tremor in it, too--a tremor of fear; and the fear was so terrible that it kept her from looking down even when she knew a little head was thrusting itself up through her great warm wing. She drew the wing as a caressing arm lovingly about it though, and saying to herself, "I must wait till they are all come; then I'll look," she gazed upward at the moon that was just showing a rim of gold over the hay-stack--and closed her eyes.

There was no sleep that long night for little mother Quackalina.

It was a great, great night. Under her breast, wonderful happenings every minute; outside, the white moonlight; and always in sight across the yard, just a dark object against the ground--Sir Sooty, sound asleep, like a philosopher!

Oh yes, it was a great, great night. Its last hours before day were very dark and sorrowful, and by the time a golden gleam shot out of the east Quackalina knew that her first glance into the nest must bring her grief. The tiny restless things beneath her brooding wings were chirping in an unknown tongue. But their wiry Japanesy voices, that clinked together like little copper kettles, were very young and helpless, and Quackalina was a true mother-duck, and her heart went out to them.

When the fatal moment came and she really looked down into the nest, her relief in seeing beautiful feathered things, at least, was greater than any other feeling. It was something not to have to mother a lot of "tarrups," certainly.

Little guineas are very beautiful, and when presently Quackalina found herself crossing the yard with her twenty dainty red-booted hatchlings, although she longed for her own dear, ugly, smoky, "beautiful" ducklings, she could not help feeling pleasure and pride in the exquisite little creatures that had stepped so briskly into life from beneath her own breast.

It was natural that she should have hurried to the pond with her brood. Wouldn't she have taken her own ducklings there? If these were only little "step-ducks," she was resolved that, in the language of step-mothers, "they should never know the difference." She would begin by taking them in swimming.

Besides, she longed for the pond herself. It was the place where she could best think quietly and get things straightened in her mind.

Sir Sooty had not seen her start off with her new family. He had said to himself that he had lost so much rest all night that he must have a good breakfast, and so, at the moment when Quackalina and the guineas slipped around the stable to the cow-pond, he was actually floundering in the very centre of one of the feed-troughs in the yard, and letting the farmer turn the great mass of cooked "feed" all over him. Greedy ducks often act that way. Even the snow-white Pekins do it. It is bad enough any time, but on the great morning when one becomes a papa-duck he ought to try to be dignified, and Sir Sooty knew it. And he knew full well that events had been happening all night in the nest, and that was why he said he had lost rest. But he hadn't. A great many people are like Sir Sooty. They say they lose sleep when they don't.

But listen to what was taking place at the cow-pond, for it is this that made this story seem worth the telling.

When Quackalina reached the pond, she flapped her tired wings three times from pure gladness at the sight of the beautiful water. And then, plunging in, she took one delightful dive before she turned to the shore, and in the sweetest tones invited the little ones to follow her.

But they--

Well, they just looked down at their red satin boots and shook their heads. And then it was that Quackalina noticed their feet, and saw that they would never swim.

It was a great shock to her. She paddled along shore quite near them for a while, trying to be resigned to it. And then she waddled out on the grassy bank, and fed them with some newts, and a tadpole, and a few blue-bottle flies, and a snail, and several other delicacies, which they seemed to enjoy quite as much as if they had been young ducks. And then Quackalina, seeing them quite happy, struck out for the very middle of the pond. She would have one glorious outing, at least. Oh, how sweet the water was! How it soothed the tender spots under her weary wings! How it cooled her ears and her tired eyelids! And now--and now--and now--as she dived and dipped and plunged--how it cheered and comforted her heart! How faithfully it bore her on its cool bosom! For a few minutes, in the simple joy of her bath, she even forgot to be sorrowful.

And now comes the dear part of the troublous tale of this little black mother-duck--the part that is so pleasant to write--the part that it will be good to read.

When at last Quackalina, turning, said to herself, "I must go ashore now and look after my little steppies," she raised her eyes and looked before her to see just where she was. And then the vision she seemed to see was so strange and so beautiful that--well, she said afterwards that she never knew just how she bore it.

Just before her, on the water, swimming easily on its trusty surface, were ten little ugly, smoky, "beautiful" ducks! Ten little ducks that looked precisely like every one of Quackalina's relations! And now they saw her and began swimming towards her.

Before she knew it, Quackalina had flapped her great wings and quacked aloud three times, and three times again! And she didn't know she was doing it, either.

She did know, though, that in less time than it has taken to tell it, her own ten beautiful ducks were close about her, and that she was kissing each one somewhere with her great red bill. And then she saw that upon the bank a nervous, hysterical guinea-hen was tearing along, and in a voice like a carving-knife screeching aloud with terror. It went through Quackalina's bosom like a neuralgia, but she didn't mind it very much. Indeed, she forgot it instantly when she looked down upon her ducklings again, and she even forgot to think about it any more. And so it was that the beautiful thing that was happening on the bank, under her very eyes almost, never came to Quackalina's knowledge at all.

When her own bosom was as full of joy as it could be, why should she have turned at the sound of the carving-knife voice to look ashore, and to notice that at its first note there were twenty little pocket-knife answers from over the pond, and that in a twinkling twenty pairs of red satin boots were running as fast as they could go to meet the great speckled mother-hen, whose blady voice was the sweetest music in all the world to them?

When, after quite a long time, Quackalina began to realize things, and thought of the little guineas, and said to herself, "Goodness gracious me!" she looked anxiously ashore for them, but not a red boot could she see. The whole delighted guinea family were at that moment having a happy time away off in the cornfield out of sight and hearing.

This was very startling, and Quackalina grieved a little because she couldn't grieve more. She didn't understand it at all, and it made her almost afraid to go ashore, so she kept her ten little ducklings out upon the water nearly all day.

And now comes a very amusing thing in this story.

When this great, eventful day was passed, and Quackalina was sitting happily among the reeds with her dear ones under her wings, while Sir Sooty waddled proudly around her with the waddle that Quackalina thought the most graceful walk in the world, she began to tell him what had happened, beginning at the time when she noticed that the eggs were wrong.

Sir Sooty listened very indulgently for a while, and then--it is a pity to tell it on him, but he actually burst out laughing, and told her, with the most patronizing quack in the world, that it was "all imagination."

And when Quackalina insisted with tears and even a sob or two that it was every word true, he quietly looked at her tongue again, and then he said a very long word for a quack doctor. It sounded like 'lucination. And he told Quackalina never, on any account, to tell any one else so absurd a tale, and that it was only a canard--which was very flippant and unkind, in several ways. There are times when even good jokes are out of place.

At this, Quackalina said that she would take him to the nest and show him the little pointed egg-shells. And she did take him there, too. Late at night, when all honest ducks, excepting somnambulists and such as have vindications on hand, are asleep, Quackalina led the way back to the old nest. But when she got there, although the clear, white moonlight lay upon everything and revealed every blade of grass, not a vestige of nest or straw or shell remained in sight.

The farmer's boy had cleared them all away.

By this time Quackalina began to be mystified herself, and after a while, seeing only her own ten ducks always near, and never sighting such a thing as little, flecked, red-booted guineas, she really came to doubt whether it had all happened or not.

And even to this day she is not quite sure. How she and all her family finally got away and became happy wild birds again is another story. But while Quackalina sits and blinks upon the bank among the mallows, with all her ugly "beautiful" children around her, she sometimes even yet wonders if the whole thing could have been a nightmare, after all.

But it was no nightmare. It was every word true. If anybody doesn't believe it, let him ask the guineas.

OLD EASTER

OLD EASTER

Nearly everybody in New Orleans knew Old Easter, the candy-woman. She was very black, very wrinkled, and very thin, and she spoke with a wiry, cracked voice that would have been pitiful to hear had it not been so merry and so constantly heard in the funny high laughter that often announced her before she turned a street corner, as she hobbled along by herself with her old candy-basket balanced on her head.

People who had known her for years said that she had carried her basket in this way for so long that she could walk more comfortably with it than without it. Certainly her head and its burden seemed to give her less trouble than her feet, as she picked her way along the uneven _banquettes_ with her stick. But then her feet were tied up in so many rags that even if they had been young and strong it would have been hard for her to walk well with them. Sometimes the rags were worn inside her shoes and sometimes outside, according to the shoes she wore. All of these were begged or picked out of trash heaps, and she was not at all particular about them, just so they were big enough to hold her old rheumatic feet--though she showed a special liking for men's boots.

When asked why she preferred to wear boots she would always answer, promptly, "Ter keep off snake bites"; and then she would almost certainly, if there were listeners enough, continue in this fashion: "You all young trash forgits dat I dates back ter de snake days in dis town. Why, when I was a li'l' gal, about _so_ high, I was walkin' along Canal Street one day, barefeeted, an' not lookin' down, an' terrectly I feel some'h'n' nip me '_snip!_' in de big toe, an' lookin' quick I see a grea' big rattlesnake--"

As she said "snip," the street children who were gathered around her would start and look about them, half expecting to see a great snake suddenly appear upon the flag-stones of the pavement.

At this the old woman would scream with laughter as she assured them that there were thousands of serpents there now that they couldn't see, because they had only "single sight," and that many times when they thought mosquitoes were biting them they were being "'tackted by deze heah onvisible snakes."

It is easy to see why the children would gather about her to listen to her talk.

Nobody knew how old Easter was. Indeed, she did not know herself, and when any one asked her, she would say, "I 'spec' I mus' be 'long about twenty-fo'," or, "Don't you reckon I mus' be purty nigh on to nineteen?" And then, when she saw from her questioner's face that she had made a mistake, she would add, quickly: "I means twenty-fo' _hund'ed_, honey," or, "I means a _hund'ed_ an' nineteen," which latter amendment no doubt came nearer the truth.

Having arrived at a figure that seemed to be acceptable, she would generally repeat it, in this way:

"Yas, missy; I was twenty-fo' hund'ed years ole las' Easter Sunday."

The old woman had never forgotten that she had been named Easter because she was born on that day, and so she always claimed Easter Sunday as her birthday, and no amount of explanation would convince her that this was not always true.

"What diff'ence do it make ter me ef it comes soon or late, I like ter know?" she would argue. "Ef it comes soon, I gits my birfday presents dat much quicker; an' ef it comes late, you all got dat much mo' time ter buy me some mo'. 'Tain't fur me ter deny my birfday caze it moves round."

And then she would add, with a peal of her high, cracked laughter: "Seem ter me, de way I keeps a-livin' on--an' a-livin' on--_an' a-livin' on_--maybe deze heah slip-aroun' birfdays don't pin a pusson down ter ole age so close't as de clock-work reg'lars does."

And then, if she were in the mood for it, she would set her basket down, and, without lifting her feet from the ground, go through a number of quick and comical movements, posing with her arms and body in a way that was absurdly like dancing.

Old Easter had been a very clever woman in her day, and many an extra picayune had been dropped into her wrinkled palm--nobody remembered the time when it wasn't wrinkled--in the old days, just because of some witty answer she had given while she untied the corner of her handkerchief for the coins to make change in selling her candy.

One of the very interesting things about the old woman was her memory. It was really very pleasant to talk with a person who could distinctly recall General Jackson and Governor Claiborne, who would tell blood-curdling tales of Lafitte the pirate and of her own wonderful experiences when as a young girl she had served his table at Barataria.

If, as her memory failed her, the old creature was tempted into making up stories to supply the growing demand, it would not be fair to blame her too severely. Indeed, it is not at all certain that, as the years passed, she herself knew which of the marvellous tales she related were true and which made to order.

"Yas, sir," she would say, "I ricollec' when all dis heah town wasn't nothin' but a alligator swamp--no houses--no fences--no streets--no gas-postes--no 'lection lights--no--_no river_--_no nothin'_!"

If she had only stopped before she got to the river, she would have kept the faith of her hearers better, but it wouldn't have been half so funny.

"There wasn't anything here then but you and the snakes, I suppose?" So a boy answered her one day, thinking to tease her a little.

"Yas, me an' de snakes an' alligators an' Gineral Jackson an' my ole marster's gran'daddy an'--"

"And Adam?" added the mischievous fellow, still determined to worry her if possible.

"Yas, Marse Adam an' ole Mistus, Mis' Eve, an' de great big p'isonous fork-tailed snake wha' snatch de apple dat Marse Adam an' Mis' Eve was squabblin' over--an' et it up!"

When she had gotten this far, while the children chuckled, she began reaching for her basket, that she had set down upon the _banquette_. Lifting it to her head, now, she walled her eyes around mysteriously as she added:

"Yas, an' you better look out fur dat p'isonous fork-tailed snake, caze he's agoin' roun' hear right now; an' de favoristest dinner dat he craves ter eat is des sech no-'count, sassy, questionin' street-boys like you is."

And with a toss of her head that set her candy-basket swaying and a peal of saw-teeth laughter, she started off, while her would-be teaser found that the laugh was turned on himself.

It was sometimes hard to know when Easter was serious or when she was amusing herself--when she was sensible or when she wandered in her mind. And to the thoughtless it was always hard to take her seriously.

Only those who, through all her miserable rags and absurdities, saw the very poor and pitiful old, old woman, who seemed always to be companionless and alone, would sometimes wonder about her, and, saying a kind and encouraging word, drop a few coins in her slim, black hand without making her lower her basket. Or they would invite her to "call at the house" for some old worn flannels or odds and ends of cold victuals.

And there were a few who never forgot her in their Easter offerings, for which, as for all other gifts, she was requested to "call at the back gate." This seemed, indeed, the only way of reaching the weird old creature, who had for so many years appeared daily upon the streets, nobody seemed to know from where, disappearing with the going down of the sun as mysteriously as the golden disk itself. Of course, if any one had cared to insist upon knowing how she lived or where she stayed at nights, he might have followed her at a distance. But it is sometimes very easy for a very insignificant and needy person to rebuff those who honestly believe themselves eager to help. And so, when Old Easter, the candy-woman, would say, in answer to inquiries about her life, "I sleeps at night 'way out by de Metarie Ridge Cemetery, an' gets up in de mornin' up at de Red Church. I combs my ha'r wid de _latanier_, an' washes my face in de Ole Basin," it was so easy for those who wanted to help her to say to their consciences, "She doesn't want us to know where she lives," and, after a few simple kindnesses, to let the matter drop.

The above ready reply to what she would have called their "searchin' question" proved her a woman of quick wit and fine imagination. Anybody who knows New Orleans at all well knows that Metarie Ridge Cemetery, situated out of town in the direction of the lake shore, and the old Red Church, by the riverside above Carrollton, are several miles apart. People know this as well as they know that the _latanier_ is the palmetto palm of the Southern wood, with its comb-like, many-toothed leaves, and that the Old Basin is a great pool of scum-covered, murky water, lying in a thickly-settled part of the French town, where numbers of small sailboats, coming in through the bayou with their cargoes of lumber from the coast of the Sound, lie against one another as they discharge and receive their freight.

If all the good people who knew her in her grotesque and pitiful street character had been asked suddenly to name the very poorest and most miserable person in New Orleans, they would almost without doubt have immediately replied, "Why, old Aunt Easter, the candy-woman. Who could be poorer than she?"

To be old and black and withered and a beggar, with nothing to recommend her but herself--her poor, insignificant, ragged self--who knew nobody and whom nobody knew--that was to be poor, indeed.

Of course, Old Easter was not a professional beggar, but it was well known that before she disappeared from the streets every evening one end of her long candy-basket was generally pretty well filled with loose paper parcels of cold victuals, which she was always sure to get at certain kitchen doors from kindly people who didn't care for her poor brown twists. There had been days in the past when Easter peddled light, porous sticks of snow-white taffy, cakes of toothsome sugar-candy filled with fresh orange-blossoms, and pralines of pecans or cocoa-nut. But one cannot do everything.

One cannot be expected to remember General Jackson, spin long, imaginative yarns of forgotten days, and make up-to-date pralines at the same time. If the people who had ears to listen had known the thing to value, this old, old woman could have sold her memories, her wit, and even her imagination better than she had ever sold her old-fashioned sweets.

But the world likes molasses candy. And so Old Easter, whose meagre confections grew poorer as her stories waxed in richness, walked the streets in rags and dirt and absolute obscurity.

An old lame dog, seeming instinctively to know her as his companion in misery, one day was observed to crouch beside her, and, seeing him, she took down her basket and entertained him from her loose paper parcels.

And once--but this was many years ago, and the incident was quite forgotten now--when a crowd of street fellows began pelting Crazy Jake, a foolish, half-paralyzed black boy, who begged along the streets, Easter had stepped before him, and, after receiving a few of their clods in her face, had struck out into the gang of his tormenters, grabbed two of its principal leaders by the seats of their trousers, spanked them until they begged for mercy, and let them go.

Nobody knew what had become of Crazy Jake after that. Nobody cared. The poor human creature who is not due at any particular place at any particular time can hardly be missed, even when the time comes when he himself misses the _here_ and the _there_ where he has been wont to spend his miserable days, even when he, perhaps having no one else, it is possible that he misses his tormenters.

It was a little school-girl who saw the old woman lower her basket to share her scraps with the street dog. It seemed to her a pretty act, and so she told it when she went home. And she told it again at the next meeting of the particular "ten" of the King's Daughters of which she was a member.

And this was how the name of Easter, the old black candy-woman, came to be written upon their little book as their chosen object of charity for the coming year.

The name was not written, however, without some opposition, some discussion, and considerable argument. There were several of the ten who could not easily consent to give up the idea of sending their little moneys to an Indian or a Chinaman--or to a naked black fellow in his native Africa.

There is something attractive in the savage who sticks bright feathers in his hair, carries a tomahawk, and wears moccasins upon his nimble feet. Most young people take readily to the idea of educating a picturesque savage and teaching him that the cast-off clothes they send him are better than his beads and feathers. The picturesque quality is very winning, find it where we may.

People at a distance may see how very much more interesting and picturesque the old black woman, Easter, was than any of these, but she did not seem so to the ten good little maidens who finally agreed to adopt her for their own--to find her out in her home life, and to help her.

With them it was an act of simple pity--an act so pure in its motive that it became in itself beautiful.

Perhaps the idea gained a little following from the fact that Easter Sunday was approaching, and there was a pleasing fitness in the old woman's name when it was proposed as an object for their Easter offerings. But this is a slight consideration.

Certainly when three certain very pious little maidens started out on the following Saturday morning to find the old woman, Easter, they were full of interest in their new object, and chattered like magpies, all three together, about the beautiful things they were going to do for her.

Somehow, it never occurred to them that they might not find her either at the Jackson Street and St. Charles Avenue corner, or down near Lee Circle, or at the door of the Southern Athletic Club, at the corner of Washington and Prytania streets.

But they found her at none of the familiar haunts; they did not discover any trace of her all that day, or for quite a week afterward. They had inquired of the grocery-man at the corner where she often rested--of the portresses of several schools where she sometimes peddled her candy at recess-time, and at the bakery where she occasionally bought a loaf of yesterday's bread. But nobody remembered having seen her recently.

Several people knew and were pleased to tell how she always started out in the direction of the swamp every evening when the gas was lit in the city, and that she turned out over the bridge along Melpomene Street, stopping to collect stray bits of cabbage leaves and refuse vegetables where the bridgeway leads through Dryades Market. Some said that she had a friend there, who hid such things for her to find, under one of the stalls, but this may not have been true.

It was on the Saturday morning after their first search that three little "Daughters of the King" started out a second time, determined if possible to trace Old Easter to her hiding-place.

It was a shabby, ugly, and crowded part of town in which, following the bridged road, and inquiring as they went, they soon found themselves.

For a long time it seemed a fruitless search, and they were almost discouraged when across a field, limping along before a half-shabby, fallen gate, they saw an old, lame, yellow dog.

It was the story of her sharing her dinner with the dog on the street that had won these eager friends for the old woman, and so, perhaps, from an association of ideas, they crossed the field, timidly, half afraid of the poor miserable beast that at once attracted and repelled them.

But they need not have feared. As soon as he knew they were visitors, the social fellow began wagging his little stump of a tail, and with a sort of coaxing half-bark asked them to come in and make themselves at home.

Not so cordial, however, was the shy and reluctant greeting of the old woman, Easter, who, after trying in vain to rise from her chair as they entered her little room, motioned to them to be seated on her bed. There was no other seat vacant, the second chair of the house being in use by a crippled black man, who sat out upon the back porch, nodding.

As they took their seats, the yellow dog, who had acted as usher, squatted serenely in their midst, with what seemed a broad grin upon his face, and then it was that the little maid who had seen the incident recognized him as the poor old street dog who had shared old Easter's dinner.

Two other dogs, poor, ugly, common fellows, had strolled out as they came in, and there were several cats lying huddled together in the sun beside the chair of the sleeping figure on the back porch.

It was a poor little home--as poor as any imagination could picture it. There were holes in the floor--holes in the roof--cracks everywhere. It was, indeed, not considered, to use a technical word, "tenable," and there was no rent to pay for living in it.

But, considering things, it was pretty clean. And when its mistress presently recovered from her surprise at her unexpected visitors, she began to explain that "ef she'd 'a' knowed dey was comin' to call, she would 'a' scoured up a little."

Her chief apologies, however, were for the house itself and its location, "away outside o' quality neighborhoods in de swampy fields."

"I des camps out here, missy," she finally explained, "bec'ase dey's mo' room an' space fur my family." And here she laughed--a high, cracked peal of laughter--as she waved her hand in the direction of the back porch.

"Dey ain't nobody ter pleg Crazy Jake out here, an' him an' me, wid deze here lame an' crippled cats an' dogs--why, we sets out yonder an' talks together in de evenin's after de 'lection lights is lit in de tower market and de moon is lit in de sky. An' Crazy Jake--why, when de moon's on de full, Crazy Jake he can talk knowledge good ez you kin. I fetched him out here about a million years ago, time dey was puttin' him in de streets, caze dey was gwine hurt him. An' he knows mighty smart, git him ter talkin' right time o' de moon! But mos' gin'ally he forgits.

"Ef I hadn't 'a' fell an' sprained my leg las' week, de bread it wouldn't 'a' 'mos' give out, like it is, but I done melt down de insides o' some ole condense'-milk cans, an' soak de dry bread in it for him, an' to-morrer I'm gwine out ag'in. Yas, to-morrer I'm bleeged to go, caze you know to-morrer dats my birfday, an' all my family dey looks for a party on my birfday--don't you, you yaller, stub-tail feller you! Ef e warn't sort o' hongry, I'd make him talk fur yer; but I 'ain't learnt him much yit. He's my new-comer!"

This last was addressed to the yellow dog.

"I had blin' Pete out here till 'istiddy. I done 'dopted him las' year, but he struck out ag'in beggin', 'caze he say he can't stand dis heah soaked victuals. But Pete, he ain't rale blin', nohow. He's des got a sinkin' sperit, an' he can't work, an' I keeps him caze a sinkin' sperit what ain't got no git-up to it hit's a heap wuss 'n blin'ness. He's got deze heah yaller-whited eyes, an' when he draps his leds over 'em an' trimbles 'em, you'd swear he was stone-blin', an' dat stuff wha' he rubs on 'em it's inju'ious to de sight, so I keeps him and takes keer of him now so I won't have a blin' man on my hands--an' to save him f'om sin, too.

"Ma'am? What you say, missy? De cats? Why, honey, dey welcome to come an' go. I des picked 'em up here an' dar 'caze dey was whinin'. Any breathin' thing dat I sees dat's poorer 'n what I is, why, I fetches 'em out once-t, an' dey mos' gin'ally stays.

"But if you yo'ng ladies 'll come out d'reckly after Easter Sunday, when I got my pervisions in, why I'll show you how de ladies intertain dey company in de old days when Gin'ral Jackson used ter po' de wine."

Needless to say, there was such a birthday party as had never before been known in the little shanty on the Easter following the visit of the three little maids of the King's Daughters.

When Old Easter had finished her duties as hostess, sharing her good things equally with those who sat at her little table and those who squatted in an outer circle on the floor, she remarked that it carried her away back to old times when she stood behind the governor's chair "while he h'isted his wineglass an' drink ter de ladies' side curls." And Crazy Jake said yes, he remembered, too. And then he began to nod, while blind Pete remarked, "To my eyes de purtiest thing about de whole birfday party is de bo'quet o' Easter lilies in de middle o' de table."

SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT

SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT

You would never have guessed that her name was Idyl--the slender, angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a saint balancing a bucket of water on top of her head!

Yet, as she puts the pail down beside her, the evening sun gleaming through her fair hair seems to transform it into a halo, as some one speaks her name, "Saint Idyl."

Her thin, little ears, sun-filled as she stands, are crimson disks; and the outlines of her upper arms, dimly seen through the flimsy sleeves, are as meagre as are the ankles above her bare, slim feet.

The appellation "Saint Idyl," given first in playful derision, might have been long ago forgotten but for the incident which this story records.

It was three years before, when the plantation children, colored and white together, had been saying, as is a fashion with them, what they would like to be.

One had chosen a "blue-eyed lady wid flounces and a pink fan," another a "fine white 'oman wid long black curls an' ear-rings," and a third would have been "a hoop-skirted lady wid a tall hat."

It was then that Idyl, the only white child of the group--the adopted orphan of the overseer's family--had said:

"I'd choose to be a saint, like the one in the glass winder in the church, with light shinin' from my head. I'd walk all night up and down the 'road bend,' so travellers could see the way and wagons wouldn't get stallded."

The children had shuddered and felt half afraid at this.

"But you'd git stallded yo'se'f in dat black mud--"

"An' de runaways in de canebrake 'd ketch yer--"

"An' de paterole'd shoot yer--"

"An' eve'body'd think you was a walkin' sperit, an' run away f'om yer."

So the protests had come in, though the gleaming eyes of the little negroes had shown their delight in the fantastic idea.

"But I'd walk on a cloud, like the saint in the picture," Idyl had insisted. "And my feet wouldn't touch the mud, and when the runaways looked into my face, they'd try to be good and go back to their masters. Nobody would hurt me. Tired horses would be glad to see my light, and everybody would love me."

So, first laughingly, and then as a matter of habit, she had come to be known as "Saint Idyl."

As she stands quite still, with face uplifted, out on the levee this evening, one is reminded in looking at her of the "Maid of Domremi" listening to the voices.

Idyl was in truth listening to voices--voices new, strange, and solemn--voices of heavy, distant cannon.

It was the 23d of April, 1862. A few miles below Bijou Plantation Farragut's fleet was storming the blockade at Fort Jackson. All along the lower Mississippi it was a time of dread and terror.

The negroes, for the most part awed and terror-stricken, muttered prayers as they went about, and all night long sang mournfully and shouted and prayed in the churches or in groups in their cabins, or even in the road.

The war had come at last. Its glare was upon the sky at night, and all day long reiterated its persistent staccato menace:

"Boom-m-m! Gloom-m-m! Tomb-b-b! Doom-m-m!"

The air had never seemed to lose the vibratory tremor, "M-m-m!" since the first gun, nearly six days ago.

It was as if the lips of the land were trembling. And the trembling lips of the black mothers, as they pressed their babes to their bosoms, echoed the wordless terror.

Death was in the air. Had they doubted it? In a field near by a shell had fallen, burying itself in the earth, and, exploding, had sent two men into the air, killing one and returning the other unhurt.

Now the survivor, saved as by a miracle, was preaching "The Wrath to Come."

To quote from himself, he had "been up to heaven long enough to get 'ligion." He had "gone up a lost sinner and come down a saved soul. Bless Gord!"

Regarding his life as charmed, the blacks followed him in crowds, while he descanted upon the text: "Then two shall be in the field. One shall be taken and the other left."

A great revival was in progress.

But this afternoon the levee at Bijou had been the scene of a new panic.

Rumor said that the blockade chain had been cut. Farragut's war monsters might any moment come snorting up the river. Nor was this all. The only local defence here was a volunteer artillery company of "Exempts." Old "Captain Doc," their leader, also local druggist and postmaster (doctor and minister only in emergency), was a unique and picturesque figure. Full of bombast as of ultimate kindness of feeling, he was equally happy in all of his four offices.

The "Rev. Capt. Doc, M.D.," as he was wont, on occasion, to call himself--why drag in a personal name among titles in themselves sufficiently distinguishing?--was by common consent the leading man with a certain under-population along the coast. And when, three months before, he had harangued them as to the patriot's duty of home defence, there was not a worthy incapable present but enthusiastically enlisted.

The tension of the times forbade perception of the ludicrous. For three months the "Riffraffs"--so they proudly called themselves--rheumatic, deaf, palsied, halt, lame, and one or two nearly blind, had represented "the cause," "the standing army," "le grand militaire," to the inflammable imaginations of this handful of simple rural people of the lower coast.

Of the nine "odds and ends of old cannon" which Captain Doc had been able to collect, it was said that but one would carry a ball. Certainly, of the remaining seven, one was of wood, an ancient gunsmith's sign, and another a gilded papier-mache affair of a former Mystick Krewe.

Still, these answered for drill purposes, and would be replaced by genuine guns when possible. They were quite as good for everything excepting a battle, and in that case, of course, it would be a simple thing "to seize the enemy's guns" and use them.

When the Riffraffs had paraded up and down the river road no one had smiled, and if anybody realized that their captain wore the gorgeous pompon of a drum-major, its fitness was not questioned.

It was becoming to him. It corresponded to his lordly strut, and was in keeping with the stentorian tones that shouted "Halt!" or "Avance!"

Captain Doc appealed to Americans and creoles alike, and the Riffraffs marched quite as often to the stirring measures of "La Marseillaise" as to "The Bonny Blue Flag."

Ever since the first guns at the forts, the good captain had been disporting himself in full feather. He was "ready for the enemy."

His was a pleasing figure, and even inspiring as a picturesque embodiment of patriotic zeal; but when this afternoon the Riffraffs had planted their artillery along the levee front, while the little captain rallied them to "prepare to die by their guns," it was a different matter.

The company, loyal to a man, had responded with a shout, the blacksmith, to whose deaf ears his anvil had been silent for twenty years, throwing up his hat with the rest, while the epileptic who manned the papier-mache gun was observed to scream the loudest.

Suddenly a woman, catching the peril of the situation, shrieked:

"They're going to fire on the gunboats! We'll all be killed."

Another caught the cry, and another. A mad panic ensued; women with babies in their arms gathered about Captain Doc, entreating him, with tears and cries, to desist.

But for once the tender old man, whose old boast had been that one tear from a woman's eyes "tore his heart open," was deaf to all entreaty.

The Riffraffs represented an injured faction. They had not been asked to enlist with the "Coast Defenders"--since gone into active service--and they seemed intoxicated by the present opportunity to "show the stuff they were made of."

At nearly nightfall the women, despairing and wailing, had gone home. Amid all the excitement the little girl Idyl had stood apart, silent. No one had noticed her, nor that, when all the others had gone, she still lingered.

Even Mrs. Magwire, the overseer's wife, with whom she lived, had forgotten to hurry or to scold her. What emotions were surging in her young bosom no one could know.

There was something in the cannon's roar that charmed her ear--something suggestive of strength and courage. Within her memory she had known only weakness and fear.

After the yellow scourge of '53, when she was but four years old, she had realized vaguely that strange people with loud voices and red faces had come to be to her in the place of father and mother, that the Magwire babies were heavy to carry, and that their mother had but a poor opinion of a "lazy hulk av a girrl that could not heft a washtub without panting."

Idyl had tried hard to be strong and to please her foster-mother, but there was, somehow, in her life at the Magwires' something that made her great far-away eyes grow larger and her poor little wrists more weak and slender.

She envied the Magwire twins--with all their prickly heat and their calico-blue eyes--when their mother pressed them lovingly to her bosom. She even envied the black babies when their great black mammies crooned them to sleep.

What does it matter, black or white or red, if one is loved?

An embroidered "Darling" upon an old crib-blanket, and a daguerreotype--a slender youth beside a pale, girlish woman, who clasped a big-eyed babe--these were her only tokens of past affection.

There was something within her that responded to the daintiness of the loving stitches in the old blanket--and to a something in the refined faces in the picture. And they had called their wee daughter "Idyl"--a little poem.

Yet she, not understanding, hated this name because of Mrs. Magwire, whose most merciless taunt was, "Sure ye're well named, ye idle dthreamer."

Mrs. Magwire, a well-meaning woman withal, measured her maternal kindnesses to the hungry-hearted orphan beneath her roof in generous bowls of milk and hunks of corn-bread.

Idyl's dreams of propitiating her were all of abstractions--self-sacrifice, patience, gratitude.

And she was as unconscious as was her material benefactress that she was an idealist, and why the combination resulted in inharmony.

This evening, as she stood alone upon the levee, listening to the cannon, a sudden sense of utter desolation and loneliness came to her. She only of all the plantation was unloved--forgotten--in this hour of danger.

A desperate longing seized her as she turned and looked back upon the nest of cabins. If she could only save the plantation! For love, no sacrifice could be too great.

With the thought came an inspiration. There was reason in the women's fears. Should the Riffraffs fire upon the fleet, surely guns would answer, else what was war?

She glanced at her full pail, and then at the row of cannon beside her.

If she could pour water into them! It was too light yet, but to-night--

How great and daring a deed to come to tempt the mind of a timid, delicate child who had never dared anything--even Mrs. Magwire's displeasure!

All during the evening, while Mother Magwire rocked the babies, moaning and weeping, Idyl, wiping her dishes in the little kitchen, would step to the door and peer out at the levee where the guns were. Every distant cannon's roar seemed to challenge her to the deed.

When finally her work was done, she slipped noiselessly out and started towards the levee, pail in hand; but as she approached it she saw moving shadows.

The Riffraffs were working at the guns. Seeing her project impossible, she sat down in a dark shadow by the roadside--studied the moving figures--listened to the guns which came nearer as the hours passed.

It was long after midnight; accelerated firing was proclaiming a crisis in the battle, when, suddenly, there came the rattle of approaching wheels accompanied by a noisy rabble. Then a woman screamed.

Captain Doc was coming with a wagon-load of ammunition. The guns were to be loaded.

The moon, a faint waning crescent, faded to a filmy line as a pillar of fire, rising against the sky northward towards the city, exceeded the glare of the battle below.

The darkness was quite lifted now, up and down the levee, and Idyl, standing in the shadow, could see groups of people weeping, wringing their hands, as Captain Doc, pompon triumphant, came in sight galloping down the road.

In a second more he would pass the spot where she stood--stood unseen, seeing the sorrow of the people, heeding the challenge of the guns. The wagon was at hand.

With a faint, childish scream, raising her thin arms heavenward, she plunged forward and fell headlong in its path.

The victory was hers.

The tinselled captain was now tender surgeon, doctor, friend.

In his own arms he raised the limp little form from beneath the wheel, while the shabby gray coats of a dozen "Riffraffs," laid over the cannon-balls in the wagon, made her a hero's bed; and Captain Doc, seizing the reins, turned the horses cautiously, and drove in haste back to his drug-store.

Farragut's fleet and "the honor of the Riffraffs" were forgotten in the presence of this frail embodiment of death.

Upon his own bed beside an open window he laid her, and while his eager company became surgeon's assistants, he tenderly bound her wounds.

For several hours she lay in a stupor, and when she opened her eyes the captain knelt beside her. Mrs. Magwire stood near, noisily weeping.

"Is it saved?" she asked, when at length she opened her eyes.

Captain Doc, thinking her mind was wandering, raised her head, and pointed to the river, now ablaze with light.

"See," said he. "See the steamboats loaded with burning cotton, and the great ship meeting them; that is a Yankee gunboat! See, it is passing."

"And you didn't shoot? And are the people glad?"

"No, we didn't shoot. You fell and got hurt at the dark turn by the acacia bushes, where you hang your little lantern on dark nights. Some one ought to have hung one for you to-night. How did it happen, child?"

"It didn't happen. I did it on purpose. I knew if I got hurt you would stop and cure me, and not fire at the boats. I wanted to save--to save the plan--"

While the little old man raised a glass to the child's lips his hand shook, and something like a sob escaped him.