"
Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas.
[Illustration: _Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas._]
"But that is he!" he exclaimed.
Charity Biglow turned to the boy. "And what do you mean--"
"That's the boy I found in the garden, Ricky!"
"Is it?" She stared, fascinated, at the lean brown face, the untidy
black hair, the bitter mouth, which their hostess had so skilfully
caught in her unfinished drawing.
"So you've met Jeems." Miss Biglow looked at Val thoughtfully. "And what
did you think of him?"
"It's rather--what did he think of me. He seemed to hate me. I don't
know why. All I ever said to him was 'Hello.'"
"Jeems is a queer person--"
"Sam says that he is none too honest," observed Ricky, her attention
still held by the picture.
Miss Biglow shook her head. "There is a sort of feud between the swamp
people and the farmers around here. And neither side is wholly to be
believed in their estimation of the other. Jeems isn't dishonest, and
neither are a great many of the muskrat hunters. In the early days all
kinds of outlaws and wanted men fled into the swamps and lived there
with the hunters. One or two desperate men gave the whole of the swamp
people a bad name and it has stuck. They are a strange folk back there
in the fur country.
"Some are Cajuns, descendants of exiles from Evangeline's country; some
are Creoles who took to that way of life after the Civil War ruined
them.
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