THERE was thing to do on the plantation so Telesphore, having a few dollars in his pocket, thought he would go down and spend Sunday in the vicinity of Marksville. There was really thing more to do in the vicinity of Marksville than in the neighborhood of his own small farm; but Elvina would t be down there, r Amaranthe, r any of Ma'me Valtour's daughters to harass him with doubt, to torture him with indecision, to turn his very soul into a weather-cock for love's fair winds to play with. Telesphore at twenty-eight had long felt the need of a wife. His home without one was like an empty temple in which there is altar, offering. So keenly did he realize the necessity that a dozen times at least during the past year he had been on the point of proposing marriage to almost as many different young women of the neighborhood. Therein lay the difficulty, the trouble which Telesphore experienced in making up his mind. Elvina's eyes were beautiful and had often tempted him to the verge of a declaration. But her skin was over swarthy for a wife; and her movements were slow and heavy; he doubted she had Indian blood, and we all kw what Indian blood is for treachery. Amaranthe presented in her person ne of these obstacles to matrimony. If her eyes were t so handsome as Elvina's, her skin was fine, and being slender to a fault, she moved swiftly about her household affairs, or when she walked the country lanes in going to church or to the store. Telesphore had once reached the point of believing that Amaranthe would make him an excellent wife. He had even started out one day with the intention of declaring himself, when, as the god of chance would have it, Ma'me Valtour espied him passing in the road and enticed him to enter and partake of coffee and baignes. He would have been a man of stone to have resisted, or to have remained insensible to the charms and accomplishments of the Valtour girls. Finally there was Ganache's widow, seductive rather than handsome, with a good bit of property in her own right. While Telesphore was considering his chances of happiness or even success with Ganache's widow, she married a younger man. From these embarrassing conditions, Telesphore sometimes felt himself forced to escape; to change his environment for a day or two and thereby gain a few new insights by shifting his point of view.