"Amen!" I heard some one say; and have often wondered whether it was

yon varlet, the mocking-bird, or Cal Davidson himself, who spoke.... I

looked around for Partial. He had followed Helena.

FOOTNOTE: [B] (The words in Helena's note, addressed to Henry Francis Drake,

Esquire, were, as I have said, but two: "Yes--Now". That was why I was

married that evening. It was curious about the wedding ring, for that

I would not borrow; so an old negro blacksmith took a gold ring

Edouard gave me, one found years ago by a Cajun treasure hunter in

some one of the few successful hunts for the treasure of Jean Lafitte;

and into this, in place of the gem long since missing, he clasped my

pearl, the one we got on the river far in the north; the great pearl

later known as the largest and most brilliant ever found in fresh

water. It was I who named it the "Belle Helène". So that our ring

pleased all but L'Olonnois and Jean Lafitte. These two pirates had set

at work that very afternoon, with 'Polyte (by Edouard's consent) and

dug behind the smoke-house. Wonderful enough, they did find old

bricks, enclosing a sort of hollow cavity, bricks of an ancient day;

and though they got nothing else ('Polyte said he knew who had beaten

them to this treasure--it was Achilles Dufrayne of Calcasieu, curse

him!) they both explained how easy it would be to deceive the fair

captive into thinking we really had found the ring's setting as well

as the ring itself, in a pirate treasure-box. I would not do that, on

the ground that already I had deceived the fair captive quite

enough.... But, though yon varlet, my friend dear old Cal Davidson,

spoke rather freely about his honeymoon, and all that, I can not do so

of mine with Helena.... I did not know that I could again be so happy.

Often I have wished I were a romantic man, like dear old Cal.... I

fear my book on the mosquitoes of North America never will be written

now.--H. F. D.)



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