Their host hitched his chair a little to one side. He bent forward to expectorate, and then answered with his eyes fixed upon some distant point toward the mountains. "Wa-al, yes," he said; "but she aint yere, Louisianny aint." Miss Ferrol gave a little start, and immediately made an effort to appear entirely at ease. "Did you say," asked Ferrol, "that your daughter's name was----" "Louisianny," promptly. "I come from thar." Louisiana got up and walked to the opposite end of the porch. "The storm will be upon us in a few minutes," she said. "It is beginning to rain now. Come and look at this cloud driving over the mountain-top." Ferrol rose and went to her. He stood for a moment looking at the cloud, but plainly not thinking of it. "His daughter's name is Louisiana," he said, in an undertone. "Louisiana! Isn't that delicious?" Suddenly, even as he spoke, a new idea occurred to him. "Why," he exclaimed, "your name is Louise, isn't it? I think Olivia said so." "Yes," she answered, "my name is Louise." "How should you have liked it," he inquired, absent-mindedly, "if it had been Louisiana?" She answered him with a hard coolness which it startled him afterward to remember. "How would you have liked it?" she said. They were driven back just then by the rain, which began to beat in upon their end of the porch. They were obliged to return to Olivia and Mr. Rogers, who were engaged in an animated conversation. The fact was that, in her momentary excitement, Olivia had plunged into conversation as a refuge. She had suddenly poured forth a stream of remark and query which had the effect of spurring up her companion to a like exhibition of frankness. He had been asking questions, too. "She's ben tellin' me," he said, as Ferrol approached, "thet you're a littery man, an' write fur the papers--novel-stories, an' pomes an' things. I never seen one before--not as I know on." "I wonder why not!" remarked Ferrol. "We are plentiful enough." "Air ye now?" he asked reflectively. "I had an idee thar was only one on ye now an' ag'in--jest now an' ag'in." He paused there to shake his head. "I've often wondered how ye could do it," he said, "_I_ couldn't. Thar's some as thinks they could if they tried, but I wa'n't never thataway--I wa'n't never thataway. I haint no idee I could do it, not if I tried ever so. Seems to me," he went on, with the air of making an announcement of so novel a nature that he must present it modestly, "seems to me, now, as if them as does it must hev a kinder gift fur'it, now. Lord! I couldn't write a novel. I wouldn't know whar to begin." "It is difficult to decide where," said Ferrol. He did not smile at all. His manner was perfect--so full of interest, indeed, that Mr. Rogers quite warmed and expanded under it. "The scenes on 'em all, now, bein' mostly laid in Bagdad, would be agin me, if nothin' else war," he proceeded. "Being laid----?" queried Ferrol.