Madame Valtour had been in the some time before she noticed the absence of the Dresden china figure from the corner of the mantel-piece, where it had stood for years. Aside from the intrinsic value of the piece, there were some very sad and tender memories associated with it. A baby’s lips that were now forever still had loved once to kiss the painted “pitty ’ady”; and the baby arms had often held it in a close and embrace.  
Madame Valtour gave a rapid, startled glance around the room, to see perchance if it had been misplaced; but she failed to discover it.
 
Viny, the house-maid, when summoned, remembered having carefully dusted it that morning, and was rather indignantly positive 182that she had not broken the thing to bits and the pieces.
 
“Who has been in the room during my absence?” questioned Madame Valtour, with . Viny abandoned herself to a moment’s reflection.
 
“Pa-Jeff comed in yere wid de mail—” If she had said St. Peter came in with the mail, the fact would have had as little bearing on the case from Madame Valtour’s point of view.
 
Pa-Jeff’s uprightness and honesty were so long and firmly established as to have become proverbial on the . He had not served the family faithfully since boyhood and been all through the war with “old Marse Valtour” to at his time of life to with household bric-a-brac.
 
“Has any one else been here?” Madame Valtour naturally inquired.
 
“On’y Agapie w’at brung you some Creole aiggs. I tole ’er to sot ’em down in de hall. I don’ know she comed in de settin’-room o’ not.”
 
Yes, there they were; eight, fresh “Creole eggs” on the muslin in the sewing 183basket. Viny herself had been seated on the gallery brushing her mistress’ gowns during the hours of that lady’s absence, and could think of no one else having to the sitting-room.
 
Madame Valtour did not entertain the thought that Agapie had stolen the . Her worst fear was, that the girl, finding herself alone in the room, had handled the bit of and inadvertently broken it.
 
Agapie came often to the house to play with the children and amuse them—she loved nothing better. Indeed, no other spot known to her on earth so closely her confused idea of paradise, as this home with its atmosphere of love, comfort and good cheer. She was, herself, a cheery bit of humanity, with kind impulses and animal spirits.
 
Madame Valtour recalled the fact that Agapie had often admired this Dresden figure (but what had she not admired!); and she remembered having heard the girl’s assurance that if ever she became of “fo’ bits” to spend as she liked, she would have some 184one buy her just such a china doll in town or in the city.
 
Before night, the fact that the Dresden lady had strayed from her proud on the sitting-room mantel, became, through Viny’s indiscreet , pretty well known on the place.
 
The following morning Madame Valtour crossed the field and went over to the Bedauts’ cabin. The cabins on the plantation were not grouped; but each stood upon the section of land which its occupants cultivated. Pa-Jeff’s cabin was the only one near enough to the Bedauts to admit of neighborly .
 
Seraphine Bedaut was sitting on her small gallery, stringing red peppers, when Madame Valtour approached.
 
“I’m so , Madame Bedaut,” began the planter’s wife, . But the ’Cadian woman arose politely and interrupted, offering her visitor a chair.
 
“Come in, set down, Ma’me Valtour.”
 
“No, no; it’s only for a moment. You know, Madame Bedaut, yesterday when I returned from making a visit, I found that an 185was missing from my sitting-room mantel-piece. It’s a thing I prize very, very much—” with sudden tears filling her eyes—“and I would not willingly part with it for many times its value.” Seraphine Bedaut was listening, with her mouth partly open, looking, in truth, stupidly puzzled.
 
“No one entered the room during my absence,” continued Madame Valtour, “but Agapie.” Seraphine’s mouth snapped like a steel trap and her black eyes gleamed with a flash of anger.
 
“You wan’ say Agapie stole some’in’ in yo’ house!” she cried out in a voice, tremulous from passion.
 
“No; oh no! I’m sure Agapie is an honest girl and we all love her; but you know how children are. It was a small Dresden figure. She may have handled and broken the thing and perhaps is afraid to say so. She may have thoughtlessly misplaced it; oh, I don’t know what! I want to ask if she saw it.”
 
“Come in; you got to come in, Ma’me Valtour,” stubbornly insisted Seraphine, leading the way into the cabin. “I sen’ ’er to de house yistiddy wid some Creole aiggs,” she 186went on in her rasping voice, “like I all time do, because you all say you can’t eat dem sto’ aiggs no mo’. Yere de basket w’at I sen’ ’em in,” reaching for an Indian basket which hung against the wall—and which was partly filled with cotton seed.
 
“Oh, never mind,” interrupted Madame Valtour, now distressed at witnessing the woman’s .
 
“Ah, bien non. I got to show you, Agapie en’t no mo’ thief ’an yo’ own child’en is.” She led the way into the adjoining room of the hut.
 
“Yere all her things w’at she ’muse herse’f wid,” continued Seraphine, pointing to a soapbox which stood on the floor just beneath the open window. The box was filled with an indescribable of and ends, mostly doll-rags. A catechism and a blue-*backed speller dog-eared corners from out of the confusion; for the Valtour children were making heroic and patient efforts toward Agapie’s training.
 
Seraphine cast herself upon her knees before the box and dived her thin brown hands among its contents. “I wan’ show you; I 187goin’ show you,” she kept repeating excitedly. Madame Valtour was beside her.
 
Suddenly the woman drew from among the rags, the Dresden lady, as dapper, sound, and smiling as ever. Seraphine’s hand shook so violently that she was in danger of letting the image fall to the floor. Madame Valtour reached out and took it very quietly from her. Then Seraphine rose tremblingly to her feet and broke into a that was pitiful to hear.
 
Agapie was approaching the cabin. She was a girl of twelve. She walked with bare, feet over the rough ground and bare-headed under the hot sun. Her thick, short, black hair covered her head like a mane. She had been dancing along the path, but slackened her pace upon sight of the two women who had returned to the gallery. But when she perceived that her mother was crying she impetuously forward. In an instant she had her arms around her mother’s neck, clinging so in her youthful strength as to make the frail woman .
 
188Agapie had seen the Dresden figure in Madame Valtour’s possession and at once guessed the whole .
 
“It en’t so! I tell you, maman, it en’t so! I neva touch’ it. Stop cryin’; stop cryin’!” and she began to cry most piteously herself.
 
“But Agapie, we fine it in yo’ box,” moaned Seraphine through her .
 
“Then somebody put it there. Can’t you see somebody put it there? ’Ten’t so, I tell you.”
 
The scene was extremely painful to Madame Valtour. Whatever she might tell these two later, for the time she felt herself powerless to say anything befitting, and she walked away. But she turned to remark, with a hardness of expression and intention which she seldom displayed: “No one will know of this through me. But, Agapie, you must not come into my house again; on account of the children; I could not allow it.”
 
As she walked away she could hear Agapie comforting her mother with renewed protestations of .
 
189Pa-Jeff began to fail visibly that year. No wonder, considering his great age, which he to be about one hundred. It was, in fact, some ten years less than that, but a good old age all the same. It was seldom that he got out into the field; and then, never to do any heavy work—only a lit............