"Is it?" She stared, fascinated, at the lean brown face, the untidy black hair, the bitter mouth, which their hostess had so skilfully caught in her unfinished drawing. "So you've met Jeems." Miss Biglow looked at Val thoughtfully. "And what did you think of him?" "It's rather--what did he think of me. He seemed to hate me. I don't know why. All I ever said to him was 'Hello.'" "Jeems is a queer person--" "Sam says that he is none too honest," observed Ricky, her attention still held by the picture. Miss Biglow shook her head. "There is a sort of feud between the swamp people and the farmers around here. And neither side is wholly to be believed in their estimation of the other. Jeems isn't dishonest, and neither are a great many of the muskrat hunters. In the early days all kinds of outlaws and wanted men fled into the swamps and lived there with the hunters. One or two desperate men gave the whole of the swamp people a bad name and it has stuck. They are a strange folk back there in the fur country. "Some are Cajuns, descendants of exiles from Evangeline's country; some are Creoles who took to that way of life after the Civil War ruined them. There's many a barefooted boy or girl of the swamps who bears a name that was once honored at the Court of France or Spain. And there are Americans of the old frontier stock who came down river with Andrew Jackson's army from the wilds of Tennessee and the Indian country. It's a strange mixture, and once in a while you find a person like Jeems. He speaks the uneducated jargon of his people but he reads and writes French and English perfectly. He has studied under Pere Armand until he has a classical education such as was popular for Creole boys of good family some fifty years ago. Pere Armand is an old man now, but he is as good an instructor as he is a priest. "Jeems wants to make something of himself. He argues logically that the swamp has undeveloped resources which might save its inhabitants from the grinding poverty which is slowly destroying them. And it is Jeems' hope that he can discover some of the swamp secrets when he is fitted by training to do so." "Who is he?" Val asked. "Is Jeems his first or last name?"