The answer was an invitation to go away and let the owner alone, as he was, in certain specified respects, the vilest of living creatures, and no company for a fine gentyman.

The “fine gentyman” longed to blaspheme—­but before old Charlie!—­in the name of pride, how could he?  He mounted and started away.

“Tell you what I’ll make wid you,” said Charlie.

The other, guessing aright, turned back without dismounting, smiling.

“How much Belles Demoiselles hoes me now?” asked the deaf one.

“One hundred and eighty thousand dollars,” said the Colonel, firmly.

“Yass,” said Charlie.  “I don’t want Belle Demoiselles.”

The old Colonel’s quiet laugh intimated it made no difference either way.

“But me,” continued Charlie, “me,—­I’m got le Compte De Charleu’s blood in me, any’ow,—­a litt’ bit, any’ow, ain’t it?”

The Colonel nodded that it was.

“Bien! If I go out of dis place and don’t go to Belles Demoiselles, de peoples will say,—­dey will say, ’Old Charlie he been all doze time tell a blame lie! He ain’t no kin to his old grace-gran-muzzer, not a blame bit!  He don’t got nary drop of De Charleu blood to save his blame low-down old Injin soul!’ No, sare!  What I want wid money, den?  No, sare!  My place for yours!”

He turned to go into the house, just too soon to see the Colonel make an ugly whisk at him with his riding-whip.  Then the Colonel, too, moved off.

Two or three times over, as he ambled homeward, laughter broke through his annoyance, as he recalled old Charlie’s family pride and the presumption of his offer.  Yet each time he could but think better of—­not the offer to swap, but the preposterous ancestral loyalty.  It was so much better than he could have expected from his “low-down” relative, and not unlike his own whim withal—­the proposition which went with it was forgiven.

This last defeat bore so harshly on the master of Belles Demoiselles, that the daughters, reading chagrin in his face, began to repent.  They loved their father as daughters can, and when they saw their pretended dejection harassing him seriously they restrained their complaints, displayed more than ordinary tenderness, and heroically and ostentatiously concluded there was no place like Belles Demoiselles.  But the new mood touched him more than the old, and only refined his discontent.  Here was a man, rich without the care of riches, free from any real trouble, happiness as native to his house as perfume to his garden, deliberately, as it were with premeditated malice, taking joy by the shoulder and bidding her be gone to town, whither he might easily have followed, only that the very same ancestral nonsense that kept Injin Charlie from selling the old place for twice its value prevented him from choosing any other spot for a city home.

But by and by the charm of nature and the merry hearts around him prevailed; the fit of exalted sulks passed off, and after a while the year flared up at Christmas, flickered, and went out.