“Mr. Mathurin, ain’t it ’mos’ time to stop givin’ credit to Arsène Pauché. Look like that crop o’ his ain’t goin’ to start to pay his account. I don’t see, me, anyway, how you come to take that triflin’ Li’le river gang on the place.”
“I know it was a mistake, ’Polyte, but que voulez-vous?” the planter returned, with a good-natured shrug. “Now they are yere, we can’t let them starve, my frien’. Push them to work all you can. Hole back all supplies that are not necessary, an’ nex’ year we will let some one else enjoy the privilege of feeding them,” he ended, with a laugh.
“I wish they was all back on Li’le river,” ’Polyte muttered under his breath as he turned and walked slowly away.
Directly back of the store was the young man’s sleeping-room. He had made himself quite comfortable there in his corner. He had screened his windows and doors; planted Madeira vines, which now formed a thick green curtain between the two pillars that faced his room; and had swung a hammock out there, in which he liked well to repose himself after the fatigues of the day.
He lay long in the hammock that evening, thinking over the day’s happenings and the morrow’s work, half dozing, half dreaming, and wholly possessed by the charm of the night, the warm, sweeping air that blew through the long corridor, and the almost unbroken stillness that enveloped him.
At times his random thoughts formed themselves into an almost inaudible speech: “I wish she would go ’way f’om yere.”
One of the dogs came and thrust his cool, moist muzzle against ’Polyte’s cheek. He caressed the fellow’s shaggy head. “I don’t know w’at’s the matta with her,” he sighed; “I don’ b’lieve she’s got good sense.”
It was a long time afterward that he murmured again: “I wish to God she’d go ’way f’om yere!”
The edge of the moon crept up—a keen, curved blade of light above the dark line of the cotton-field. ’Polyte roused himself when he saw it. “I didn’ know it was so late,” he said to himself—or to his dog. He entered his room at once, and was soon in bed, sleeping soundly.
It was some hours later that ’Polyte was roused from his sleep by—he did not know what; his senses were too scattered and confused to determine at once. There was at first no sound; then so faint a one that he wondered how he could have heard it. A door of his room communicated with the store, but this door was never used, and was almost completely blocked by wares piled up on the other side. The faint noise that ’Polyte heard, and which came from within the store, was followed by a flare of light that he could discern through the chinks, and that lasted as long as a match might burn.