Carl groaned. "Oh, don't talk of it!" he said; then added, irritably, "It's a song, that's all—the song of a Southern swamp."
"Call it by it's real name, Devil," said the elder brother, grimly.
"I would, if I was rich enough to have a picture painted—the Spirit of the Swamp—a beautiful woman, falsely called a devil by cowards, dark, languorous, mystical, sleeping among the vines I saw up there, with the great red blossoms dropping around her."
"And the great mottled snakes coiling over her?"
"I didn't see any snakes."
"Well," said Mark, refilling his pipe, "now I'm going to tell you my story. When I met you on that windy pier at Exton, and proposed that you should come down here with me, I was coming myself, in any case, wasn't I? And why? I wanted to get to a place where I could be warm—warm, hot, baked; warm through and through; warm all the time. I wanted to get to a place where the very ground was warm. And now—I'll tell you why."
He rose from his seat, laid down his pipe, and, extending his hand, spoke for about fifteen minutes without pause. Then he turned, went back hastily to the old chimney, where red coals still lingered, and sat down close to the glow, leaving Carl wonder-struck in his tilted chair. The elder man leaned over the fire and held his hands close to the coals; Carl watched him. It was nine o'clock, and the thermometer marked eighty.
For nearly a month after Christmas, life on the old plantation went on without event or disaster. Carl, with his crutch and cane, could not walk far; his fancy now was to limp through the east orange-aisle to the place of tombs, and sit there for hours, playing softly, what might be called crooning, on his violin. The place of tombs was a small, circular space surrounded by wild orange-trees in a close, even row, like a hedge; here were four tombs, massive, oblong blocks of the white conglomerate of the coast, too coarse-grained to hold inscription or mark of any kind. Who the old Spaniards were whose bones lay beneath, and what names they bore in the flesh, no one knew; all record was lost. Outside in the wild thicket was a tomb still more ancient, and of different construction: four slabs of stone, uncovered, about three feet high, rudely but firmly placed, as though inclosing a coffin. In the earth between these low walls grew a venerable cedar; but, old as it was, it must have been planted by chance or by hand after the human body beneath had been laid in its place.
"Why do you come here?" said Deal, pausing and looking into the place of tombs, one morning, on his way to the orange-grove. "There are plenty of pleasanter spots about."
"No; I like this better," answered Carl, without stopping the low chant of his violin. "Besides, they like it too."