of old gaming-table spoils.  Honore and Mademoiselle, his sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were striving for this end.  Don Jose sent this intelligence to his kinsman as glad tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre, also, was given to the chieftain.  The letter that came back to the young Spaniard did not blame him so much:  he was ignorant of all the facts; but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify him that if Palmyre’s union with Bras-Coupe should be completed, as sure as there was a God in heaven, the writer would have the life of the man who knowingly had thus endeavored to dishonor one who shared the blood of the De Grapions.  Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to drop hints to Don Jose that the engagement of Bras-Coupe and Palmyre need not be considered irreversible; but the don was not desirous of disappointing his terrible pet.  Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a little too deeply.  She thought the moment had come for herself to insist on the match, and thus provoke Agricola to forbid it.  To her incalculable dismay she saw him a second time reconsider and become silent.

The second person who did not fear Bras-Coupe was Mademoiselle.  On one of the giant’s earliest visits to see Palmyre he obeyed the summons which she brought him, to appear before the lady.  A more artificial man might have objected on the score of dress, his attire being a single gaudy garment tightly enveloping the waist and thighs.  As his eyes fell upon the beautiful white lady he prostrated himself upon the ground, his arms outstretched before him.  He would not move till she was gone.  Then he arose like a hermit who has seen a vision. “Bras-Coupe n’ pas oule oir zombis (Bras-Coupe dares not look upon a spirit).”  From that hour he worshipped.  He saw her often; every time, after one glance at her countenance, he would prostrate his gigantic length with his face in the dust.

The third person who did not fear him was—­Agricola?  Nay, it was the Spaniard—­a man whose capability to fear anything in nature or beyond had never been discovered.

Long before the end of his probation Bras-Coupe would have slipped the entanglements of bondage, though as yet he felt them only as one feels a spider’s web across the face, had not the master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper.  Many a day did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the other.  Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew nigh[3].  A goodly company had assembled.  All things were ready.  The bride was dressed, the bridegroom had come.  On the great back piazza, which had been inclosed with sail-cloth and lighted with lanterns, was Palmyre, full of a new and deep design and playing her deceit to the last, robed in costly garments to whose beauty was added the charm of their having been worn once, and once only, by her beloved Mademoiselle.