"Dass what I say!" exclaimed the negro. "Yes, seh, so soon I see him I say, mos' sholy dass de same man what Mistoo Tah-bawx lookin' faw to show him 'roun' 'bout de swamp! Yes, seh, not-instandin' I never see him befo'! No, seh.--Lawd! look yondeh! look dat big bahsta'd hawn-snake! He kyant git away: he's hu't! Lawd! dass what kill dat man! Dat man trawmp on him in de dark, and he strack him wid his hawny tail! Look at dem fo' li'l' spot' on de man' foot! Now, Mistoo Tah-bawx! You been talk' 'bout dem ah bahsta'd hawn-snake not pizen! Well, mos' sholy dey _bite_ ain't pizen; but if dat hawn on de een of his tail dess on'y tetch you, you' gone! Look at dat man! Kill' him so quick dey wa'n't time for de place to swell whah he was hit!" But Tarbox quietly pointed out to St. Pierre that the tiny wounds were made by the reptile's teeth. "The coroner's verdict will probably be 'privation and exposure,'" said he softly; "but it ought to be, 'killed by fright and the bite of a harmless snake.'" On his murmured suggestion, St. Pierre gave orders that, with one exception, every woodsman go to his tree-felling, and that the lugger and canoe, with the dead man lying untouched, be towed by skiff and a single pair of oars to the head of the canal for inquest and burial. "I'll go with him," said Tarbox softly to St. Pierre. "We owe him all we're going to get out of these woods, and I owe him a great deal more." When a little later he was left for a moment without a hearer, he said to the prostrate form, "Poor fellow! And to think I had her message to you to come out of this swamp and begin to live the life of a live man!" The rude funeral moved away, and soon the woods were ringing with the blow of axes and the shout and song of black timber-men as gayly as though there never had been or was to be a storm or a death. CHAPTER XIX. "TEARS AND SUCH THINGS." Marguerite and her friend had no sooner taken their seats to drive home from the studio the day the sketch was made than Marguerite began a perfect prattle. Her eyes still shone exaltedly, and leaped and fell and darkened and brightened with more than the swift variety of a fountain in the moonlight, while she kept trying in vain to meet her companion's looks with a moment's steady regard.