market. The father and mother and their kindred and companions in long
past misfortunes and sorrows had grown to wealth and standing among the
German-Americans of New Orleans and Lafayette. The little girl cousin of
Salome Müller, who as a child of the same age had been her playmate on
shipboard at the Helder and in crossing the Atlantic, and who looked so
much like Salome, was a woman of thirty, the wife of Karl Rouff.

One summer day she was on some account down near the lower limits of New
Orleans on or near the river front, where the population was almost wholly
a lower class of Spanish people. Passing an open door her eye was suddenly
arrested by a woman of about her own age engaged in some humble service
within with her face towards the door.

Madame Karl paused in astonishment. The place was a small drinking-house,
a mere _cabaret_; but the woman! It was as if her aunt Dorothea, who had
died on the ship twenty-five years before, stood face to face with her
alive and well. There were her black hair and eyes, her olive skin, and
the old, familiar expression of countenance that belonged so distinctly to
all the Hillsler family. Madame Karl went in.

"My name," the woman replied to her question, "is Mary." And to another
question, "No; I am a yellow girl. I belong to Mr. Louis Belmonti, who
keeps this 'coffee-house.' He has owned me for four or five years. Before
that? Before that, I belonged to Mr. John Fitz Müller, who has the
saw-mill down here by the convent. I always belonged to him." Her accent
was the one common to English-speaking slaves.

But Madame Karl was not satisfied. "You are not rightly a slave. Your name
is Müller. You are of pure German blood. I knew your mother. I know you.
We came to this country together on the same ship, twenty-five years ago."