The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on. "So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved, clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers." "Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----" "And for me you're supremely the right one." Instantly he rued his speech. Some delicate mechanism seemed to stop. Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited, listening, while they stood looking off to where water, sky, and sun met; and presently, to his immeasurable relief, she responded: "_Grandpere_ was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still lived with his father. So when _grand'mere_ and her two friends--with Sidney and Mingo--returned from the privateer to the hotel they were opposite neighbors to the Chapdelaines and almost without another friend, in a city--among a people--on fire with war. Then, pretty soon--" the fair narrator stopped and significantly smiled. Chester twinkled. "Um-h'm," he said, "your _grandpere's_ heart became another city on fire." "Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead, soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift lottery and bazaar, lasting a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and in a balcony of the grand salon, that _grandpere_--" the narrator ceased and smiled again. "Proposed," Chester murmured. The girl nodded. They sank to a bench, the world behind them, the stars above. "_Grand'mere_, she couldn't say yes till he'd first go to her home, almost at the Canadian line, and ask her family. She, she couldn't go; she couldn't leave Sidney and Mingo and neither could she take them. So by railroad at last he got there. But her family took so long to consent that he got back only the next year and through the fall of the city. Only by ship could he come, and not till he had begged President Lincoln himself and promised him to work with his might to return Louisiana to the Union. Well, of course, he and his father had voted against secession, weeping; yet now this was a pledge terrible to keep, and the more because, you see? what to do, and when and how to do it----" "Were left to his own judgment and tact?" "Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can we say bitternesses in English?" "Indeed we can," said Chester. "To what bitternesses _grandpere_ had to return!" "Aline!" Mme. De l'Isle called; "a table!"