"Tell me, Cip, do you see that dreadful sky, or am I still dreaming?"

The negro did not lift his head, but said,

huskily,

"Marster, it has come, Ir has come!"

"What has come?"

66

Lord, look down an' help us," murmured

the negro solemnly.

66

Why don't you answer me!

Howland? Who has come?

Where is Mr.

What has come?"

CHAPTER VIII.

DARK DAYS.

HE cholera was upon us; but not without warning. Year after year it had pursued its lonely march through woodland and desert, as noiseless and implacable as Fate. For months and months, rumor had heralded its fell ap

proach. Now it stole with the

auras of morning into a populous town; now it glided with the shades of nightfall into some happy village.

Graves sprung up in its wake, like thistles.

The lank Arab, munching his few dates in the desert, looked up from the scanty meal, and

beheld those basilisk eyes. His camel wandered

off without a master.

The be-nighted traveller by the Ganges, sunk exhausted on the banks of the muddy river; but the beasts of the jungle did not growl over him, for even the nameless birds flew, shrieking, away.

The English mother sat by the hamlet-door, singing to her babe. The tiny hand clutched at the air, and the soft white eyelids were ringed

with violet.

Beauty saw a baleful visage in her mirror. No rouge, nor pearl-powder nor balm could make it comely again.

The miser hugged and kissed his money-bags; but where he went he could not take his idols.

Then Dives died in his palace, and the leper at the groined gate-way.

The fingers of lovers were unknitted.

The Cholera, the Scourge!

In a single night the Afreet spread his wings over the doomed city. A woman had been

stricken down while buying a bunch of flowers in St. Mary's Market. An unknown man fell headlong from his horse on the levee. Six persons lay at the point of death in a café on Rue de Baronne. The hospitals were already filling up; and the red flag wilted in the languid breeze at the quarantine. The streets were strewn with lime, and every precaution taken by the authorities to extirpate the plague. And then commenced that long procession of funerals which never ceased to trail by our door for so many weary months. It is a question in my mind, though, whether the cholera is contagious.

How hot, and dull, and dead the days were!

The roofs of the houses lay festering in the canescent heat; the flowers drooped, and died cankerous deaths; the outer leaves of the foliage changed to a livid green hue, and the timid grass crept up, and withered, in the interstices of the sidewalk. All day a tawny gold mist hung over the place. At night, the dews fell, and from

cypress swamps, on the skirts of the city, rose deadly miasma.

No joyous, children played at the door-step in the twilight. The guttural voice of the strolling marchand was no longer heard crying his creams and comfits. The small fruit-booths along the street were tenantless. The St. Charles Theatre and The Varieties were closed only the tragedy of death drew crowded houses. The glittering bar-rooms, with their fancy glasses, and mirrors, and snowy drinks, were almost deserted. Even rondo, roulette, faro, monte and lansquenet, lost their fascination. Mass was said morning and evening in the old cathedral at Place d' Armes ; and many of the churches, catholic and protestant, were open throughout the day.

The wheel of social life was broken.

As to Howland and myself, we were not panicstricken. The fine edge of my fear of death had been blunted by a similar experience, at Cuba, during a yellow-fever season; and Howland re