Flowers sprang plentifully where Sidonie dwelt. Her best homespun gown was her own weaving; the old dog lying on the galerie always thumped the floor with his tail and sank his obsequious head as that robe passed; the fawn--that Claude had brought--would come trotting and press its head against it; all the small living things of the dooryard would follow it about; and if she stood by the calf-pen the calves would push each other for the nearest place, lay their cheeks upon the fence's top, and roll their eyes--as many a youth of Grande Pointe would have done if he might. Chat-oue,--I fear I have omitted to mention that the father of Crebiche, like the father of Claude, had lost his wife before he was of age,--Chat-oue looked often over that fence. When matters take that shape a girl _must_ quit school. And yet Sidonie, when after a short vacation the school resumed its sessions, resumed with it. Toutou, who had to admit now that his sister was even more grand for her age than he, was always available for protection. There was no wonder that Sidonie wished to continue; Bonaventure explained why: "So in_ter_esting is that McGuffey's Third Reader!" Those at home hesitated, and presently it was the first of October. Now it was too late to withdraw; the examination was to take place. The school's opponents had expressed little impatience at the State Superintendent's weary delay, but at length Catou asked, "Why dat man don't nevva come!" "The wherefore of his non-coming I ignore," said Bonaventure, with a look of old pain in his young face; "but I am ready, let him come or let him come not." "'Tain't no use wait no longer," said Catou; "jis well have yo' lil show widout him." "Sir, it shall be had! Revolution never go backwood!" Much was the toil, many the anxieties, of the preparation. For Bonaventure at once determined to make the affair more than an examination. He set its date on the anniversary of the day when he had come to Grande Pointe. From such a day Sidonie could not be spared. She was to say a piece, a poem, an apostrophe to a star. A child, beholding the little star in the heavens, and wondering what it can be, sparkling diamond-like so high up above the world, exhorts it not to stop twinkling on his account. But to its tender regret the school knew that no more thereafter was Sidonie to twinkle in its firmament. "Learn yo' lessons hard, chil'run; if the State Sup'inten'ent, even at the last, you know"--Bonaventure could not believe that this important outpost had been forgotten. CHAPTER X. CONSPIRACY. About this time a certain Mr. Tarbox--G. W. Tarbox--was travelling on horseback and touching from house to house of the great sugar-estates of the river "coast," seeing the country and people, and allowing the _elite_ to subscribe to the "Album of Universal Information."