God has written on every side of our nature,--on the mind, on the soul, yes, and in our very flesh,--the interdict forbidding love to have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could only cry, "Oh, is it, _is it_, selfishness for one's heart just to be hungry and thirsty?" And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle between his knees, waiting for his son's choice, and ready to make it his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's heart,--as if love were subject to arithmetic!--yielding it to one who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered, the father spoke. "Claude, I tell you!" his face lighted up with courage and ambition. "We better go--Mervilionville!" Claude's heart leaped, but he kept his countenance. "Vermilionville? No, papa; you will not like Vermilionville." "Yaas! I will like him. 'Tis good place! Bonaventure come from yondah. When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I tole you. He tell Sidonie he bringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may bee you go Mervilionville; dat make me glad,' he say: 'dat way,' he say, 'what I rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervilionville? St. Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like Mervilionville? You write me letter, when you was yondah, you like him fus' class!" Claude let silence speak consent. He stooped, and began to load himself with their joint property. He had had, in his life, several sorts of trouble of mind; but only just now at twenty was he making the acquaintance of his conscience. Vermilionville was the call that had been sounding within him all these months, and Marguerite was the haunting fantasy. CHAPTER X. A STRONG TEAM. I would not wish to offend the self-regard of Vermilionville. But--what a place in which to seek enlargement of life! I know worth and greatness have sometimes, not to say ofttimes, emerged from much worse spots; from little lazy villages, noisy only on Sunday, with grimier court-houses, deeper dust and mud, their trade more entirely in the hands of rat-faced Isaacs and Jacobs, with more frequent huge and solitary swine slowly scavenging about in abysmal self-occupation, fewer vine-clad cottages, raggeder negroes, and more decay. Vermilionville is not the worst, at all. I have seen large, and enlarging, lives there.