"Tell de trut', I don't like dat dancing on de supper-table, Felix. 'T is super_flu_ous. De floor is good enough. An' you know, w'en a lady is dancing on a table, after a good supper, of co'se every glass is a temptation to her slipper. An' slippers an' wine-glasses--well, to say de least, de combination it is disastrous. "So, I say, de floor it is good enough for me. It seem more _comme il faut_. "_Mais_ come along. We will be late." PART SECOND I "Sing, nigger, sing! Sing yo' rhyme! De waters is a-floodin'--dey 's a-roarin' on time! Climb, squirrel, climb!" For several miles, when the night was still or the wind favorable, one could follow the song, accented by simultaneous blows of implements of defense marking the measure. "Sing, nigger, sing! Sing an' pray! Ol' Death is on de water--he's a-ridin' dis way! Pray, nigger, pray!" Some of the words might have been elusive had they been unfamiliar, but the annual agitation kept the songs of the river in mind; and even in safe sections, where many sat in peace beside the rising waters, they would take their pipes from their lips to catch up the danger-songs and sympathetically pass them along. Many a prayer went with them, too, from humble petitioners who knew whereof they prayed. Such were an old black couple who sat one night upon the brow of the outer levee at Carrollton, since become an upper district of far-reaching New Orleans. In strong contrast to the stirring scenes enacting below the city, all was peace and tranquillity here. A strong, new embankment, securely built several hundred feet inland, had some years before supplanted the outer levee, condemned as insecure, so that the white inhabitants of the suburb slept, intelligently safe behind a double barrier, for the condemned bank had stood the stress of so many seasons that much of the low land lying between the two levees was finally occupied by squatters, mostly negroes, this being free space, taking no rent of such as did not fear the ever-impending mortgage which the river held. Of this class, quite apart from others, might have been seen almost any evening the old couple, Hannah and Israel, sitting upon the brow of the levee near the door of their low cabin, while, always within call, there played about them a fair-haired little girl and a dog. When the beautiful child, followed by the dog, a fine Irish setter, would suddenly emerge in a chase from among the woodpiles about the cabin, there was a certain high-bred distinction in them both which set them apart from the rest of the picture.