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He read trouble; some trouble apart from the subject, in her quiet, intense eyes. "You know sombodie want buy dat?" she asked. "I'll find some one," he promptly replied. Then they talked a little about the proper price for it, and then were very still until Mr. Tarbox said: "I walked out here hoping to meet you." Madame Beausoleil looked slightly startled, and then bowed gravely.
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.
Just after seven o'clock that same evening young Henfrey and his friend Brock met in the small lounge of the Hotel des Palmiers, a rather obscure little establishment in the Avenue de la Costa, behind the Gardens, much frequented by the habitues of the Rooms who know Monte Carlo and prefer the little place to life at the Paris, the Hermitage, and the Riviera Palace, or the Gallia, up at Beausoleil.
"Have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man named 'Thanase Beausoleil?" This question to every one met, day in, day out, in early morning lights, in noonday heats, under sunset glows, by a light figure in thin, clean clothing, dusty shoes, and with limp straw hat lowered from the head.
"Yass." Claude's eyes were full of a glad surprise, and asked a question that his lips did not dare to venture upon. Madame Beausoleil read it, and she said: "We was raise' together, Bonaventure and me." She waved her hand toward her daughter. "He teach her to read. Seet down to the fire; we make you some sopper."
By and by, as first the land of the Acadians and then the land of the Creoles was left behind, a man every now and then would smile and shake his head to mean he did not understand for the question was in French. But then very soon it began to be in English too, and by and by not in French at all. "Sir, have you seen anywhere, coming back from the war, a young man named 'Thanase Beausoleil?"
One would have supposed an ambitious chap like him would have spent his first earnings, as other ambitious ones did, for a saddle; but 'Thanase Beausoleil had bought a fiddle. He had hardly got it before he knew how to play it. Yet, to the father's most welcome surprise, he remained just as bold a rider and as skilful a thrower of the arriatte as ever.
In three minutes the powerful Cacasotte had thrown fourteen of the robbers into the waves. The other men had also done their best. The deck was cleared of the pirates, who had to swim for their lives. The robbers who remained in the boat were too few to resist. Beausoleil found himself again master of his barge, thanks to the coolness and courage of Cacasotte.
Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and enlarging, lives there. Hither came the two St. Pierres. "No," Claude said; "they would not go to the Beausoleil house." Privately he would make himself believe he had not returned to any thing named Beausoleil, but only and simply to Vermilionville.
Madame Beausoleil blushed as though she herself were Marguerite and Tarbox were Claude. "Ah! love Marguerite! Naw, naw! He dawn't love noboddie but hees papa! Hees papa tell me dat! Ah! naw, 'tis not so!" Mr. Tarbox stopped still; and when Zoséphine saw they were in the shadow of the trees while all about them was brightened by the momentary Southern twilight, she, too, stopped, and he spoke.
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