"Because for what?" asked Charlie in plain anger; but both looked
quickly toward the house! The Colonel tossed his hands wildly in the
air, rushed forward a step or two, and giving one fearful scream of
agony and fright, fell forward on his face in the path. Old Charlie
stood transfixed with horror. Belles Demoiselles, the realm of maiden
beauty, the home of merriment, the house of dancing, all in the tremor
and glow of pleasure, suddenly sunk, with one short, wild wail of
terror--sunk, sunk, down, down, down, into the merciless, unfathomable
flood of the Mississippi.

Twelve long months were midnight to the mind of the childless father;
when they were only half gone, he took his bed; and every day, and every
night, old Charlie, the "low-down," the "fool," watched him tenderly,
tended him lovingly, for the sake of his name, his misfortunes, and his
broken heart. No woman's step crossed the floor of the sick-chamber,
whose western dormer-windows overpeered the dingy architecture of old
Charlie's block; Charlie and a skilled physician, the one all interest,
the other all gentleness, hope, and patience--these only entered by the
door; but by the window came in a sweet-scented evergreen vine,
transplanted from the caving bank of Belles Demoiselles. It caught the
rays of sunset in its flowery net and let then softly in upon the sick
man's bed; gathered the glancing beams of the moon at midnight, and
often wakened the sleeper to look, with his mindless eyes, upon their
pretty silver fragments strewn upon the floor.

By and by there seemed--there was--a twinkling dawn of returning reason.
Slowly, peacefully, with an increase unseen from day to day, the light
of reason came into the eyes, and speech became coherent; but withal
there came a failing of the wrecked body, and the doctor said that