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more companionable instrument into his hands, but never before did he feel its galling deficiencies as now. Why, a fife would be better!

Blossier felt the picturesque and poetical element in his plan, and that it was odious to be obliged to depend on such means for its execution. However, there was no chance of getting a fife and learning to play it within an hour, so he soon contrived more optimistic views of the case as it stood. A bass-viol gave forth, at all events, a very strong masculine sound, well calculated to convey assurances of protection!

He put himself again into his ragged coat, again took up his ragged straw hat, and started forth to inform the ladies of his intentions; there would be nothing comforting in it if in the night that heavy scraping boom took them unawares. "Au contraire," he said gravely to him

self.

It was not hard to spread the news. The women were concentrating their weakness for the night; scattered relatives were flocking together to spend it at the most central house of the clan; the women living on the outskirts of the village came over the bridge, or down the turnpike, or up the stage-road, as the case might be, to lodge for the time being with neighbors more closely neighbored than themselves. The general trepidation passed the bounds of reason. Many Strathboro' households had been exclusively feminine for many months,-yes, years, their natural protectors had been long endangered beyond the chances of this misadventure; but with a solidarity of sentiment that did them credit, the women all agreed to suffer in kind with those who had special cause for alarm, and uncommon fear prevailed.

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Blossier was a little man, a little, thin, dim, hay-colored man, but with so French a face, and of a type so associated in our minds with dark coloring, that it seemed as if he must have faded to his present tints after centuries of exposure to the weather.

The viol was much taller than was he, and, you may be sure, after he began his patrol at ten o'clock, he soon found more reasons than sentimental ones for wishing it something else.

On his first round he stopped in front of every door on one side of the street, and boomed forth a few deeply buzzing bars of the "Marseillaise," or still more unfamiliar and dislocated strains from "Orphée aux Enfers."

He had vague doubts as to the appropriateness of Offenbach, but the jolly fragments he remembered titillated his own Gallic nerves so delightfully after the emotional tension of the song of patriotism and the exhaustion of carrying the viol, that he concluded the ladies too must surely find them cheering.

Some of them confessed afterward that they were comforted by these sounds as of a gi

gantic bumblebee in musical practice; others said they were so queer and foreign-like that they made them lonesomer than before; they fairly "honed" to hear even that old fiddle grumble out an attempt at " Dixey," or "Julianna Johnson Coming to Town." The night wore on.

And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star
Has tracked the chilly gray!
What, watching yet! how very far

The morning lies away!

Mrs. Pembroke, moved by a half-conscious remorse for her daylight ungraciousness, came out to her gate as Blossier stopped there for the second time, and asked him in to have "a dram and a snack."

Pretty Miss Molly Boon called to him once, as he went by her mother's house, and asked him to come in and help her move a sick child. Miss Molly gave him a cup of coffee. The east was gray with the welling dawn when Blossier, weary enough, stopped before the last house at the end of a street-his bow arm dropped, his eyes fastened themselves on a corner of the house-yes; there it was, fire! a curling spit of flame leaped, vivid in the darkness, around the corner, above the floor of the porch.

The double-bass fell. Blossier ran up the walk; before he could reach the house the sneaking flame had grown bolder, it had fastened itself into the wooden pillar by the wall. He shouted; he threw a stone at the door as he ran; around the corner the fire was bursting up from a pile of debris against the wall; it caught like teeth in the dry clapboards; the porch-pillar was burning. Blossier ran in upon the blazing stuff; he had torn off his coat and wrapped it around his fists, and he kicked and knocked the brands far out into the gravel walk and the grass. Two women were now beside him. It looked as if the house would go; the little flames were burning merrily. That meant that most of the town would go, for a fine dawn wind was springing up. They brought buckets of water and a ladder, and meanwhile Blossier was whipping the fire with a shovel that he had caught from one of them. He contrived to command the women without losing a second; he made them pour water from the floor above; he fought like a fiend. Suddenly a memory of the barricades rose clear and sharp within him as he had not remembered them for years; the spirit of war swelled like a trumpet's note within the little man, and his soul responded to its own cry for the salvation of "les femmes et les enfants."

It was a sight to see, the alien, old Blossy, in the weird growing light, his life in his hand, his clothes burning upon him, his face scorched and smoke-blackened, fighting, at the close quarters of a death-struggle, an enemy that was not his enemy, gaining a victory that did not save him!

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"I'll help tote this man into my house my self, A'nt 'Cindy," was Jane M'Grath's answer; and together they lifted their burden.

"Into the spare room," said she in the hall. Her voice was clear and hard, while her tears, falling like quiet rain on Blossier's face, were making little white blots and streaks there.

In the beginning of the conflict, Mrs. M'Grath had set her five-year-old daughter on the gravel walk by the front gate, out of harm's way, and told her to stay there. There she still sat, crying lustily.

"Go over after Miss Mary Bell Croft," Miss Jane now commanded Aunt 'Cindy, "and take Janey with you, and leave her there; the children 'll look after her a while."

As she spoke she was cutting his clothes away from Blossier; his arms seemed badly burnt. She saw this had better be done before he came to himself.

"Do you know the news?" called Mrs. Pembroke to Mrs. Kitchens, across the way, hurrying out to the front gate, while her breakfast was being put on the table. "The town came within an ace of burning to the ground, lock, stock, and barrel, last night. Jane M'Grath's house was afire, and old Blossy-Mr. Blossy I reckon I feel like calling him to-day-put it out, and he got burnt mighty bad. Old A'nt 'Cindy came over hours ago to fetch Mary Bell to come help Jane fix him. They ain't got no idea how it caught. The children-A'nt 'Cindy's grandchildren and little Janey-had been piling up some rubbish 'gainst the wall, making a play-house, and that was where the fire begun. You never can tell what children are up to; like as not they'd been trying to roast corn or something. There was a right smart south wind blowing early, and if Jane's house had got fairly caught-No; 'Cindy said they did n't think Blossy was burnt dangerous. Yes; you're right: he is lucky to be in Jane's hands. Jane ain't smart, but she 's mighty clever. It's a wonder I did n't see the whole thing. I was up and down all over the house most of the night, and I heard that poor thing scraping and bomming on that there big fiddle of his, all over the town. Yes, it was kind o' company; but I lay down 'bout daybreak, and got to snoozing after 'while.

Mary and little Mary stayed mighty still. I never heard 'em up and down none after eleven o'clock, but Mary says she never slept two hours. But I tell you, a man never has the wife that 'll worry over him like his mother. I feel like I'll walk to Tullahoma myself to-day, if I can't find out something 'bout Jimmy any other way," and Miss Catherine wiped her eyes as she turned toward the house, calling, "Yes; I'm coming," in answer to a second shrill warning that breakfast was waiting, and leaving Mrs. Kitchens still struggling to get in her account of how she spent the night.

This was about as much impression as the incident of the fire made anywhere: the town had come near burning down, but it had n't; old Blossy had saved it. There was something a little embarrassing about this: it made the usual tone about him seem, just at the time, ungracious; yet what other tone was there to take?

Anyhow, Jane M'Grath was taking care of him, and if she wanted help she knew where to ask for it, and-when were the men coming home from Tullahoma, and how were things with them?

Yes, it was well for Blossier that it was Jane M'Grath's house he had saved; it was well that it was on her, and not on another, fell most directly the debt of gratitude that the whole village owed him, but which the village was too stupid and insensible, too preoccupied and too selfish, to realize and acknowledge. Jane M'Grath was accounted in Strathboro' a particularly dull woman. Strathboro' cared a good deal for what it called smartness, and carefully classified all examples thereof as either bright or deep; but Jane M'Grath, whom they had known all her life, was, as was well known, not smart, neither bright nor deep, though she was clever-that is, good-natured, kindly, easy to get on with. Jane was more than good-natured; she was good-good with that positive quality of character that cheapens everything else in this world by comparison: and she was the furthest thing in the world from a fool; she was a wise woman.

Strathboro' did not count the conduct of life among the achievements of smartness, though it valued that too, and gave Jane a certain meed of appreciation as a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper.

Jane put her views of life's duties into no words. She did not think in words; she made about as much use of language as your horse might, for convenience, if he could.

One day as Blossier, his swathed hands on a pillow before him, sat in a big wooden rocking-chair in a wide, dim, breezy hall, sunshiny outdoors before and behind him, it occurred to him that he was getting well too fast. Janey,

according to orders, was playing on the gallery, within sound of his voice, so that he could call her "if he wanted anything,"-not that Blossier had been known to want anything since he had been in the house.

Aunt Cindy's voice, softened by the distance to the kitchen, rose and fell on the pleasant air in religious fervor; and up-stairs Jane M'Grath's footsteps could be heard. The men had all come back from Tullahoma a week before, but Andy M'Grath was not among them; he had been in the field a year, and two more were to elapse before he should return. Jane felt that the entire weight of their debt to Blossier devolved for the time upon her.

Janey's moon-face appeared at the door, she felt it incumbent on her to come and look at her charge occasionally, then, seized with a sudden impulse, she clambered down the steps, disappeared, and in a moment was laboriously climbing back again, with a very big marigold in her hand. She trotted to Blossier, her bare feet softly patting the bare floor, started to hold it out to him, remembered the swathed hands, and held it up, tiptoeing, to his nose. Flowers were to be smelled in Janey's creed, without petty distinctions as to odors. "Merci," smiled Blossier, as she laid the happy yellow thing on his pillowed lap; "ne comprenez vous pas? Non?"

The child stood looking in his face, grave and silent, ready to see what this odd creature would do next.

Jane had come down the stairs, and was standing looking on; at the same moment, then and there, she and Blossier each became possessed of an idea-small ones to be sure, but destined to become pregnant.

Blossier's blinking little lashless eyes (the lashes had been white, so their absence made no great difference in his appearance) were fixed on the curl-rags that tied up Janey's straight brown locks. Jane herself was a simple, plain body, not given to considering the decorative side of life, but she did sorely want curly hair for her child! Blossier's mind reverted to a hair-dresser he had once known in New Orleans—if he only had such a pair of tongs as that man used he was sure he could, when his hands got well, curl Janey's hair to a marvel; and how pleasant it would be to come and do it every day. Vague vistas of usefulness to this worshipful hostess opened up cheeringly before him.

The dear dumb Jane was remembering certain Strathboro' girls who had gone to boarding-schools where they had studied French,everybody knew they had; it was often mentioned in their honor,- but she had heard some very smart people-Judge Caldwell, for instance say they did n't believe they could

speak it, and Judge Caldwell mentioned that he had Northern kinfolk who got French nurses for their children, so that they learned to talk French when they were little. Why (this preface and conclusion came all but simultaneously in Jane's mind)—why could n't Janey learn it from Mr. Blossy, and why could n't other children learn from Mr. Blossy (she had a pang here at giving up the hope of a lonely eminence of learning for Janey), and thus Mr. Blossy be lifted to the dignity and prosperity of a teacher? That might indeed be a payment on the debt of gratitude.

Janey looked at her marigold with thoughts of reclaiming it-it seemed unappropriated, unappreciated, lying there on the pillow; and then she heard the coaxing voice of Aunt 'Cindy's small granddaughter calling from the big crape-myrtle tree,-she was not allowed to trespass further upon the front yard,—“Janey, Janey, I got a pooty fur ye, Janey," and she trotted off to bestow her society where it was most prized.

Jane may not have been blessed with many ideas, but she gave profound attention to those that did visit her. She pondered all day on the possibility of Blossier becoming a teacher of French, and after supper she went over to consult Mrs. Pembroke about it.

"Of course," she said, after she was seated on the gallery in the starlight, and had introduced her subject," nobody can do much with the war going on, but I 'm willing to make some sacrifices for Janey, and Mr. Blossy would n't expect much; we could just share what we 've got with him till times are better. I'm afraid he's been awful pore lately. And, after all, the town would 'a' been 'most burned down sure if it had n't been for him, sure for a heap more as for me."

Miss Catherine had no little children to be instructed, so Jane with difficulty and hitches got out so much suggestion of Strathboro's obligations.

"That's all true, Jane," replied Miss Catherine, cheerfully; "but everybody ain't as anyious to recollect them kind of things as you, and as your mother was before you. I remember now how she cherished that old Mammy Dinah of yourn, just for the way she nussed you when you had that terrible typhoid sickness when you was little. Seemed like she could n't do enough for that niggah when she got old and wuthless. Good niggah she was, too."

There was a pause, and, just as Miss Catherine was again taking up the thread of reminiscence, Jane interrupted:

"Mr. Blossy ain't a niggah, and it seems kind o' dreadful to see a white man live like he does here in Strathboro'. It ain't as if he was a real poor-white either. He's got education,

I've heard tell. He reads French newspapers. He's got some now at my house."

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'Well, he's a foreigner, you know, Jane. You never can tell anything about them like other people. He's been here doing niggah's work years, but it don't seem exactly like any other white man doing it. He's just a Frenchman first or last, and for them that wants to learn French, I reckon that's what they want. I s'pose it would be a good thing for the pore old body, but you can't do much, Jane, with the war going on, and the Lord only knows—” then loyalty sealed her lips against the first expression of doubt as to the conclusion and after-tale of the conflict. As to the present she was right. In those days there was small interest in Strathboro' in the acquirement of French by any means whatsoever. Jane accepted this fact, and went her own way.

Long before poor Andy M'Grath, gaunt and tattered, despairing and beaten, came back to his home, Strathboro' had become familiar with the sight of Blossier going about his work with a tiny figure by his side-a little girl with the most marvelous double rows of brown curls under her corn-shuck hat; curls as stiff and slick and regular as if they had been done out of wood with a turning-lathe. Strathboro' admired the curls unanimously, but an accomplishment of their owner filled them with an even livelier interest. That little thing could speak French -talk it right along with old Blossy!

The pair were continually called upon to demonstrate the fact.

When old Mrs. Farnley came in from the country to stay with her daughter-in-law, she was not to be convinced by the ordinary exhibition.

"You, Mr. Blossy," said she-"you go clean out there by that there crape-myrtle, and stay there where I can see you. Janey, you tell Mr. Blossy when he comes back to give me my stick — tell him in French." Janey was a little mystified, but she was used to exhibiting her French, so she successfully performed the feat required of her; and when Blossier, with a bow, handed the old lady her staff, more witnesses than one had a new realization that the strange tongue was not a meaningless jargon.

Andy M'Grath's soul was as much like Jane's as one corn-field pea is like another. The Infinite mind doubtless saw distinctions between them, and Jane knew that Andy took more sugar in his coffee than she did, and Andy knew that she would spank Janey sometimes when he would not; but so far as other human beings were concerned, they might as well have had interchangeable identities. When they got married, Mrs. Pembroke remarked to Mrs. Kitchens that it was curious to see two such good, dumb, clever, say-nothing bodies marry VOL. XLIV. -119.

each other; but then, she added, perhaps it would have been more curious yet if they had not.

Of course Andy accepted Blossier in exactly Jane's spirit. He felt a little at a loss as to how to conduct himself with a Frenchman, finding himself without social traditions on that point; but he had the best will in the world to adapt himself as well as he could to any new etiquette required. Neither he nor Jane had a touch of the usual sore contempt for ways new to them -so little may a large spirit be dependent on experience or intellectuality.

Andy had been home a week, and it was the evening after they had first persuaded Blossier to sup with them. Janey, her curls tumbled into merely human tresses, but presumably dreaming French dreams, lay in her trundle-bed; and close by, Jane and Andy sat at the window, cooling off, and, as they said, "talking things over." Jane now opened up the subject she had had so long at heart.

"Pears, Andy, like Mr. Blossy 's too good. to be doing niggah's work all the time. Of course with a Frenchman things is different, but seems like if he can teach Janey he might teach others."

"It 'pears like it would be more fitting," said Andy, seizing the idea.

"It's called a smart thing to know French; there 's Babe Tucker."

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Blossy must know all about it," responded Andy again.

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Yes; I heard Judge Caldwell say years ago that he was educated."

"It's a bad time now, Jane."

"I know that, Andy, but we can just try and get him started. The war 's over, and people got to educate their children quick if they 're going to 't all."

"French is extry."

"Well, Blossy 's right here, and a heap of houses besides ourn would have burnt down if he had n't been. It won't cost much. He'll be better off, anyhow, than working all the time. like a niggah. You talk to your brother Ben, Andy; he 'll like to have his girls as smart as Janey," concluded the self-sacrificing Jane, with a sigh.

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TEN years from that night Judge Caldwell was saying to a guest, a lawyer from western Tennessee: Yes, sir; Strathboro' can show more people, old and young, accomplished in the French tongue, sir, than any town-a larger proportion, sir, so accomplished — than any town in the State. There are numerous children in Strathboro' that talk French with each other together at their play, sir, sometimes. In fact, there is a little niggah here about the house somewhere now that I heard saying

you, 'Liza, where 's that piccaninny of yours?" the Judge interrupted himself to call to a servant passing the door.

"She done sleep, Jedge."

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Very well; never mind.

"Well, sir, I must let you hear that little darky talk French in the morning. It sounds comic, it does indeed. She picked it up from my grandchildren. Strathboro' always had a literary taste. This county has produced a large proportion of the great men of middle Tennessee, Mr. Hunter,—a large proportion even take the whole State together, sir,-and owing to the circumstances I have related to you, a rivalry in the French language and literature sprang up among our people,-ladies and children, that is, chiefly,- till now, sir, almost as many of them have read 'Corinne,' sir, Madame de Staël's masterpiece, as are familiar with the 'Beulah' or 'St. Elmo' of our own Miss Evans." The Judge spoke truly. It had come about that learning French was the game the town most affected; and Blossier was, of course, the teacher.

The tone about him had not greatly changed; a familiarity with French had not much decreased Strathboro's sense of the anomalous in the existence of a Frenchman; but the face of life had greatly altered to Blossier. Stimulated by the gentle proddings of Jane M'Grath, he had studied to fit himself for his new calling, and it had come about that he had developed a little genuine simple interest in exercising his few wits, and (bless him!) was enjoying the sweets of the intellectual life.

Moreover, though the tone of the town about him had not much altered, nevertheless its tone to him was necessarily, in the new circumstances, more friendly and considerate, and that deeply touched and pleased the little man.

He still lived by himself, but now it was in the "office," in Mrs. Pembroke's yard, and so he was within the pale of civilization, and could be looked after if he fell sick. Jane had not rested till that possibility was provided for. But Fate is apt to pass over the possibilities scrupulously provided for; Blossier had never spent a day in bed since he recovered from his burns, when one autumn the dear Jane herself sickened and died, and was laid away in that shadow village always growing, growing, silently and ominously, by Strathboro's side.

Poor Andy M'Grath was indeed left, as Aunt 'Cindy said, like the half of a pair of scissors. Yes, that was it; he was now a something absurdly useless, unnaturally unfit for existence, a something to provoke the mirth of Olympus. How strange a thing, still strange in its awful familiarity, that a creature so inoffensive, living in dumb, helpless good faith the life thrust upon him, could seem so played upon!

At the funeral, after Jane was laid in the ground and the earth was well heaped over her, Andy turned his poor bewildered, pain-dazed eyes upon the faces about him, and amid their wearied assumption of solemnity, beneath which the usual easy little interest in the commonplace was already asserting itself, he saw Blossier, his features working convulsively, as he gazed with eyes that did not see upon the hideous mound.

It was not in Andy to feel resentment against the others; perhaps he too realized, in the depths of his wordless consciousness, that poor humanity could hardly exist except as it is “well wadded with stupidity"; but his heart went out to Blossier, and was eased a little at the sight of his grief.

He went to him and took his hand, and without a word the two men, the two piteous old children, went away together from Jane's grave.

Months went by, and Strathboro' became used to seeing them together, and had almost ceased to gossip about the queer taste Andy showed, when one June day new fuel fed the flame of popular criticism.

The week before, Blossier had overheard one of his pupils, a middle-aged, unmarried lady, say, in his class, to her nearest neighbor, that "it was a plum' shame the way poor Mrs. M'Grath's little girls was runnin' wild with nobody but Aunt 'Cindy to look after 'em, and she so old she did n't know what she was doin', anyhow," and that it was her "'pinion that pore Miss Jane would rather they had a step-ma than to have 'em left with no raisin' at all like that."

Jane had left four daughters. This little incident gave Blossier food for profound reflection. He reflected to some purpose. That night instead of going and sitting on the gallery steps, after supper, with Andy, as usual, he stopped outside the front gate, and called with a portentous, mysterious air, "Mees-tere Andee, Mees-tere Andee,―non, non!” in answer to the invitation to enter, and then he beckoned, still mysteriously, with sidelong. backward nods of the head, for Andy, to come to him. "Howdy?" said he when Andy reached the gate, now assuming a light, dégagé air, totally inconsistent with his previous manner. "Come chez-moi, these eve-ning."

When Andy was seated on the steps of the "office," Blossier brought him a mint-julep, and with a glass of cheap claret for himself— the one luxury of his prosperity-sat down in the doorway.

"Mighty nice," said Andy, politely; "get your mint close by?"

But Blossier was so absorbed in trying to arrange his thoughts for presentation that he forgot to answer.

"Mees-tere Andee," he at last began, "your

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