Finding two or three figs fully ripe, I strolled over the way to see him among his trees and maybe find chance for a little neighborly boasting. As our custom with each other was, I ignored the bell on his gate, drew the bolt, and, passing in among Mrs. Fontenette's invalid roses, must have moved, without intention, quite noiselessly from one to another, until I came around behind the house, where a strong old cloth-of-gold rose-vine half covered the latticed side of the cistern shed. In the doorway I stopped in silent amaze. A small looking-glass hanging against the wooden cistern showed me--although I was in much the stronger light--Monsieur Fontenette. He was just straightening up from an oil-stone he had been using, and the reflection of his face fell full on the glass. Once before, but once only, had I seen such agony of countenance--such fierce and awful looking in and out at the same time; that was on a man who was still trying to get the best of a fight in which he knew he was mortally shot. Fontenette did not see me. I suppose the rose-vine screened me, and his glance did not rise quite to the mirror, but followed the soft thumbings with which he tried the two edges and point of as murderous a knife as ever I saw. As softly as a shadow I drew out of sight, turned away, and went almost back to the gate before I let my footfall be heard, and called, "M'sieu' Fontenette!" He hallooed from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away, and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good- looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent Creole way that belongs to the latitude, and how I knew I cannot tell you, but I did know--I didn't merely feel or think, but I knew!--_positively_-- that he had that hideous thing on his person. Against what contingency I could only ask myself and wonder, but I instantly decided to get him away from home and keep him away until the picnickers had got back and scattered. So I proposed a walk, a diversion we had often enjoyed together. "Yes?" he said, "to pazz the time whilse they don't arrive? With the greates' of pleasu'e!" I dare say we were both more preoccupied than we thought we were, for outside the gate we fairly ran into a lady--yes; a seamstress--the wife of the entomologist. My stars! She had seemed winning enough before, but now --what a rise in values! As we conversed it was all I could do to keep my eyes from saying: "A man with you for a wife belongs at home whenever he can be there!" But whether they spoke it or not, in some way, without word or glance, by simple radiations from the whole sweet woman, she revealed that to make that fact plain to him, to _her_, and to all of us, was what this new emphasis of charm was for.