fingers. “I thought the American lady down at the house might want to buy it.”

Thérèse could safely assure him of Melicent’s willingness to seize on the trophy.

Then she asked why Joçint had not been to the house with news of him. “I have had chickens and eggs for you, and no way of sending them.”

At mention of his son’s name, the old man’s face clouded with displeasure and his hand trembled so that he was at some pains to place the feather which he was at the moment adding to the widening fan.

“Joçint is a bad son, madame, when even you have been able to do nothing with him. The trouble that boy has given me no one knows; but let him not think I am too old to give him a sound drubbing.”

Joçint meanwhile had returned from the mill and seeing Thérèse’s horse fastened before his door, was at first inclined to skulk back into the woods; but an impulse of defiance moved him to enter, and gave to his ugly countenance a look that was far from agreeable as he mumbled a greeting to Thérèse. His father he did not address. The old man looked from son to visitor with feeble expectancy of some good to come from her presence there.

Joçint’s straight and coarse black hair hung in a heavy mop over his low retreating forehead, almost meeting the ill-defined line of eyebrow that straggled above small dusky black eyes, that with the rest of his physique was an inheritance from his Indian mother.

Approaching the safe or garde manger, which was the most prominent piece of furniture in the room, he cut a wedge from the round loaf of heavy soggy corn bread that he found there, added a layer of fat pork, and proceeded to devour the unpalatable morsel with hungry relish.

garde manger

“That is but poor fare for your old father, Joçint,” said Thérèse, looking steadily at the youth.

“Well, I got no chance me, fu’ go fine nuttin in de ’ood” (woods), he answered purposely in English, to annoy his father who did not understand the language.

“But you are earning enough to buy him something better; and you know there is always plenty at the house that I am willing to spare him.”

“I got no chance me fu’ go to de ’ouse neider,” he replied deliberately, after washing down the scant repast with a long draught from the tin bucket which he had 

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