They galloped on.  M. Grandissime brightened again, almost to the degree of vivacity.  By and by they slackened to a slow trot and were silent.  The gardens had been long left behind, and they were passing between continuous Cherokee-rose hedges on the right and on the left, along that bend of the Mississippi where its waters, glancing off three miles above from the old De Macarty levee (now Carrollton), at the slightest opposition in the breeze go whirling and leaping like a herd of dervishes across to the ever-crumbling shore, now marked by the little yellow depot-house of Westwego.  Miles up the broad flood the sun was disappearing gorgeously.  From their saddles, the two horsemen feasted on the scene without comment.

But presently, M. Grandissime uttered a low ejaculation and spurred his horse toward a tree hard by, preparing, as he went, to fasten his rein to an overhanging branch.  Frowenfeld, agreeable to his beckon, imitated the movement.

“I fear he intends to drown himself,” whispered M. Grandissime, as they hurriedly dismounted.

“Who?  Not—­”

“Yes, your landlord, as you call him.  He is on the flatboat; I saw his hat over the levee.  When we get on top the levee, we must get right into it.  But do not follow him into the water in front of the flat; it is certain death; no power of man could keep you from going under it.”

The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee’s crown.  Just abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo and moored to the levee.  They leaped into it.  A human figure swerved from the onset of the Creole and ran toward the bow of the boat, and in an instant more would have been in the river.

“Stop!” said Frowenfeld, seizing the unresisting f.m.c. firmly by the collar.

Honore Grandissime smiled, partly at the apothecary’s brief speech, but much more at his success.

“Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld,” he said, as he came near.

The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.

M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with him, and he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the levee, and took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.

“He gives his pledge not to try again,” said the Creole, as the two companions proceeded to resume the saddle.  “Do not look after him.”  (Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)

They turned homeward.

“Ah!  Mr. Frowenfeld,” said the Creole, suddenly, “if the immygrant has cause of complaint, how much more has that man!  True, it is only love for which he would have just now drowned himself; yet what an accusation, my-de’-seh, is his whole life against that ‘caste’ which shuts him up within its narrow and almost solitary limits!  And yet, Mr. Frowenfeld, this people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest and most precious of their virtues.  My-de’-seh,