"I will; I'll go," said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for self-abasement. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,--if my moral sense is worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,--seems to me like it's sort o' jumpin' the bounty for you to go and go back on an arrangement that's been all fixed up nice and tight, and when it's on'y jess to sort o' 'jump into the wagon' that's to call for you to-morrow, sun-up, drove by a nigger boy, and ride a few mile' to a house on the bayou, and wait there till a man comes with a nice little schooner, and take you on bode and sail off, and 'good-by, Sally,' and me never in sight from fust to last, 'and no questions axed.'" "I don't reject the arrangement," replied Mary, with tearful pleasantness. "If you'll do as I say, I'll do as you say; and that will be final proof to you that I believe you're"--she fell back a step, laughingly--"'the clean sand!'" She thought the man would have perpetrated some small antic; but he did not. He did not even smile, but lifted the rein a little till the horse stepped forward, and, putting out his hand, said:-- "Good-by. You don't need no directions. Jess tell the lady where you' boardin' that you've sort o' consented to spend a day or two with old Adrien Sanchez, and get into the wagon when it comes for you." He let go her hand. "Good-by, Alice." The child looked up in silence and pressed herself against her mother. "Good-by," said he once more. "Good-by," replied Mary. His eyes lingered as she dropped her own. "Come, Alice," she said, resisting the little one's effort to stoop and pick a wild-pea blossom, and the mother and child started slowly back the way they had come. The spy turned his horse, and moved still more slowly in the opposite direction. But before he had gone many rods he turned the animal's head again, rode as slowly back, and, beside the spot where Mary had stood, got down, and from the small imprint of her shoe in the damp sand took the pea-blossom, which, in turning to depart, she had unawares trodden under foot. He looked at the small, crushed thing for a moment, and then thrust it into his bosom; but in a moment, as if by a counter impulse, drew it forth again, let it flutter to the ground, following it with his eyes, shook his head with an amused air, half of defiance and half of discomfiture, turned, drew himself into the saddle, and with one hand laid upon another on the saddle-bow and his eyes resting on them in meditation, passed finally out of sight. * * *