"Yes," Chester put in, "but Ovide Landry finds it was printed years ago." "Proof!" proclaimed Mme. Alexandre, "proof that 'tis good to print ag-ain! The people that read that before, they are mozely dead." "At the same time," Chester responded, rising and addressing the chair, his hostess, "because that is a sequel to the _grand'-mere's_ story, and because _this_--this West Indian episode--is not a sequel and has no sequel, and particularly because we ought to let mademoiselle be first to judge whether my uncle's _memorandum_ is fit company for her two stories, I propose, I say, that before we read this West Indian thing we read my uncle's _memorandum_, and that we send and beg her to come and hear it with us. It's in my pocket." Patter, patter, patter, went a dozen hands. "Marcel," the hostess cried in French, "go!" "I will go with you," Mme. Alexandra proposed, "she will never come without me." "Tis but a step," said Mme. De l'Isle, "the three of us will go together." They went. Those who waited talked on of their city's true stories. The vastest and most monstrous war in human history was smoking and roaring just across the Atlantic, and in it they had racial, national, personal interests; but for the moment they left all that aside. "One troub'," Dubroca said, "'tis that all those three stone'--and all I can rim-ember--even that story of M'sieu' Smith about the fall of the city--1862--they all got in them _somewhere_, alas! the nigger. The _publique_ they are not any longer pretty easy to fascinate on that subjec'." "Ho!" Beloiseau rejoined, "_au contraire_, he's an advantage! If only you keep him for the back-_ground_; biccause in the mind of every-_body_ tha'z where he is, and that way he has the advantage to ril-ate those storie' together and----" Mademoiselle came. Her arrival, reception, installation near the hostess and opposite Chester are good enough untold. If elsewhere in that wide city a like number ever settled down to listen to an untamed writer's manuscript in as sweet content with one another _their_ story ought to be printed. "Well," Mme. Castanado chanted, "commence." And Chester read: X THE ANGEL OF THE LORD When I was twenty-four I lived at the small capital of my native Southern State. My parental home was three counties distant. My father, a slaveholding planter, was a noble gentleman, whom I loved as he loved me. But we could not endure each other's politics and I was trying to exist on my professional fees, in the law office of one of our ex-governors. I was kindly tolerated by everybody about me but had neglected social relations, being a black sheep on every hot question of the time--1860.