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“No,” she began again–and here she broke into English–“fo’ me I don’ kyare; but, Pere Jerome,–’tis fo’ dat I came to tell you,–dey shall not punizh my daughter!” She was on her feet again, smiting her heaving bosom with the fan. “She shall marrie oo she want!”

Pere Jerome had heard her out, not interrupting by so much as a motion of the hand. Now his decision was made, and he touched her softly with the ends of his fingers.

“Madame Delphine, I want you to go at ‘ome Go at ‘ome.”

“Wad you goin’ mague?” she asked.

“Nottin’. But go at ‘ome. Kip quite; don put you’se’f sig. I goin’ see Ursin. We trah to figs dat aw fo’ you.”

“You kin figs dad!” she cried, with a gleam of joy.

“We goin’ to try, Madame Delphine. Adieu!”

He offered his hand. She seized and kissed it thrice, covering it with tears, at the same time lifting up her eyes to his and murmuring:

“De bez man God evva mague!”

At the door she turned to offer a more conventional good-by; but he was following her out, bareheaded. At the gate they paused an instant, and then parted with a simple adieu, she going home and he returning for his hat, and starting again upon his interrupted business.

* * * * *

Before he came back to his own house, he stopped at the lodgings of Monsieur Vignevielle, but did not find him in.

“Indeed,” the servant at the door said, “he said he might not return for some days or weeks.”

So Pere Jerome, much wondering, made a second detour toward the residence of one of Monsieur Vignevielle’s employes.

“Yes,” said the clerk, “his instructions are to hold the business, as far as practicable, in suspense, during his absence. Every thing is in another name.” And then he whispered:

“Officers of the Government looking for him. Information got from some of the prisoners taken months ago by the United States brig Porpoise. But”–a still softer whisper–“have no fear; they will never find him: Jean Thompson and Evariste Varrillat have hid him away too well for that.”

CHAPTER XIII. TRIBULATION.

The Saturday following was a very beautiful day. In the morning a light fall of rain had passed across the town, and all the afternoon you could see signs, here and there upon the horizon, of other showers. The ground was dry again, while the breeze was cool and sweet, smelling of wet foliage and bringing sunshine and shade in frequent and very pleasing alternation.

There was a walk in Pere Jerome’s little garden, of which we have not spoken, off on the right side of the cottage, with his chamber window at one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche stood a small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a great comfort to Pere Jerome.

Up and down this path, but a few steps in its entire length, the priest was walking, taking the air for a few moments after a prolonged sitting in the confessional. Penitents had been numerous this afternoon. He was thinking of Ursin. The officers of the Government had not found him, nor had Pere Jerome seen him; yet he believed they had, in a certain indirect way, devised a simple project by which they could at any time “figs dad law,” providing only that these Government officials would give over their search; for, though he had not seen the fugitive, Madame Delphine had seen him, and had been the vehicle of communication between them. There was an orange-tree, where a mocking-bird was wont to sing and a girl in white to walk, that the detectives wot not of. The law was to be “figs” by the departure of the three frequenters of the jasmine-scented garden in one ship to France, where the law offered no obstacles.