"And suppose you should suddenly die," he said; he wanted to get at once to the worst. The woman made a quick gesture, and buried her head in her handkerchief, with the stifled cry: "Oh, Olive, my daughter!" "Well, Madame Delphine," said Père Jerome, more buoyantly, "one thing is sure: we _must_ find a way out of this trouble." "Ah!" she exclaimed, looking heavenward, "if it might be!" "But it must be!" said the priest. "But how shall it be?" asked the desponding woman. "Ah!" said Père Jerome, with a shrug, "God knows." "Yes," said the quadroone, with a quick sparkle in her gentle eye; "and I know, if God would tell anybody, He would tell you!" The priest smiled and rose. "Do you think so? Well, leave me to think of it. I will ask Him." "And He will tell you!" she replied. "And He will bless you!" She rose and gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled. "I had such a strange dream," she said, backing toward the door. "Yes?" "Yes. I got my troubles all mixed up with your sermon. I dreamed I made that pirate the guardian of my daughter." Père Jerome smiled also, and shrugged. "To you, Madame Delphine, as you are placed, every white man in this country, on land or on water, is a pirate, and of all pirates, I think that one is, without doubt, the best." "Without doubt," echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawing backward. Père Jerome stepped forward and opened the door. The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon the threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair where the hat had covered it, and dark below, gently stroking back his very soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while Père Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine's eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor were of white duck. "Well, Père Jerome," she said, in a hurried undertone, "I am just going to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!" "Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, Madame Carraze." And as she departed, the priest turned to the newcomer and extended both hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been addressing the quadroone: "Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!" They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing with the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often mentioning Evariste and often Jean. Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to Père Jerome's. His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar. She passed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other, her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the white duck shoes passed out. She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonade suit.