are still; but she slowly shakes her hanging head. "O Josephine! you don't mean no, do you? Look this way! you don't mean no?" He presses his hand passionately down upon hers. Her eyes do not turn to his; but they are lifted tearfully to the vast, unanswering sky, and as she mournfully shakes her head again, she cries,-- "I dunno! I dunno! I can't tell! I got to see Marguerite." "Well, you'll see her in an hour, and if she"-- "Naw, naw! 'tis not so; Marguerite is in New Orleans since Christmas." Very late in the evening of that day Mr. Tarbox entered the principal inn of St. Martinville, on the Teche. He wore an air of blitheness which, though silent, was overdone. As he pushed his silk hat back on his head, and registered his name with a more than usual largeness of hand, he remarked: "'Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.' "Give me a short piece of candle and a stumpy candlestick--and 'Take me up, and bear me hence Into some other chamber'"-- "Glad to see you back, Mr. Tarbox," responded the host; and as his guest received the candle and heard the number of his room,--"books must 'a' went well this fine day." Mr. Tarbox fixed him with his eye, drew a soft step closer, said in a low tone: "'My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me.'" The landlord raised his eyebrows, rounded his mouth, and darted out his tongue. The guest shifted the candle to his left hand, laid his right softly upon the host's arm, and murmured: "List! Are we alone? If I tell thee something, wilt thou tell it never?" The landlord smiled eagerly, shook his head, and bent toward his speaker. "Friend Perkins," said Mr. Tarbox, in muffled voice-- "'So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.' "Don't let the newspapers get hold of it--good-night." But it was only at daybreak that Mr. Tarbox disordered the drapery of his couch to make believe he had slept there, and at sunrise he was gone to find Claude. CHAPTER VII. 'THANASE'S VIOLIN. Had Marguerite gone to New Orleans the better to crush Claude out of her heart? No, no! Her mother gave an explanation interesting and reasonable enough, and at the same time less uncomfortably romantic. Marguerite had gone to the city to pursue studies taught better there than in Opelousas; especially music.