Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to
venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the
house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which
they but half saw--half a sight was enough--sent them tearing back
through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they
fairly dropped down, and cried:

"Was it white?" "No--yes--nearly so--we can't tell--but we saw it." And
one could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had,
whatever it was.

"If that old rascal lived in the country we come from," said certain
Américains, "he'd have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn't
he, Sanders?"

"Well, now he just would."

"And we'd have rid him on a rail, wouldn't we?"

"That's what I allow."

"Tell you what you _could_ do." They were talking to some rollicking
Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing _something_.
"What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl,
and you come out with horns and"--

"_Charivari_?" asked the Creoles.

"Yes, that's it. Why don't you shivaree him?" Felicitous suggestion.