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He is on the flatboat; I saw his hat over the levee. When we get on top the levee, we must get right into it. But do not follow him into the water in front of the flat; it is certain death; no power of man could keep you from going under it." The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee's crown. Just abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo and moored to the levee.

I had forgotten it again, when presently it showed itself with all its freight, silhouetted against the crimson sky. I said quickly: "I believe Bonaventure Deschamps is in that boat!" I was right. The skiff landed, and we saw its passengers step ashore. They came along the levee's crown towards us, "by two, by two."

Louis Cathedral, you would be pretty sure to spy, just over to your right under the levee, Belles Demoiselles Mansion, with its broad veranda and red painted cypress roof, peering over the embankment, like a bird in the nest, half hid by the avenue of willows which one of the departed De Charleus, he that married a Marot, had planted on the levee's crown.

The levee road is dotted with horsemen, and the willow avenue on the levee's crown, the whole short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate on the right and Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright with promenaders, although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight; for, so far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of which we have already spoken, the nineteenth of Louisiana's delicious February.

The huge, writhing river, risen up above the town, was full to the levee's top, and, as though the enemy's fleet was that much more than it could bear, was silently running over by a hundred rills into the streets of the stricken city.

I should want, of course, to include the levee, under which runs one side of the gardens' fence; also the opposite shore of the Mississippi, with its just discernible plantation houses behind their levee; and the great bend of the river itself, with the sun setting in unutterable gorgeousness behind the distant, low-lying pecan groves of Nine-mile Point, and the bronzed and purpled waters kissing the very crown of the great turfed levee, down under whose land side the gardens blossom and give forth their hundred perfumes and bird songs to the children and lovers that haunt their winding alleys of oleander, jasmine, laurestine, orange, aloe, and rose, the grove of magnolias and oaks, and come out upon the levee's top as the sun sinks, to catch the gentle breeze and see the twilight change to moonlight on the water.

Den she keep stret on thoo de wood 'bout two mile' mo', an' dat fetch you at Gran' Point'. Hole on; I show you." The two men started down the road, the negro on his mule, the stranger along the levee's crown.

To press her policy, "See!" exclaimed Aline, as a light swell of the ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the levee's crown and almost on a level with the eye. They were in a region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations. Whatever charms belong to the rural life of the Louisiana Delta were at their amplest on every side.

Just then a slight sound behind him brought him to his feet. He cast his eyes anxiously to the outer edge of the little strip of bank between the levee's base and the river. There was nothing visible. He paused, with his ear toward the water, his face full of frightened expectation. Ha!

On windy nights even the old Colonel took part, and grew light-hearted with occupation and excitement, as every minute the river threw a white arm over the levee's top, as though it would vault over. But all held fast, and, as the summer drifted in, the water sunk down into its banks and looked quite incapable of harm.