“Surely things are not as bad as you paint them,” said Clensy. Then he suddenly remembered how he had heard sounds of shooting while in bed, and had thought some one was out by night shooting owls in the mahogany forests near Selle district.
“Not a very rose-tinted account of the present state of affairs here,” thought Clensy as he left his two comrades and strolled back to his lodgings. But Clensy was really more worried about Sestrina than anything else. The idea that her father was an adherent to _vaudoux_ creed had greatly upset him at first. He was quite assured that Sestrina had nothing whatever to do with the _vaudoux_. And as he thought over it all, he realised that daughters are quite helpless so far as their father’s sins are concerned. “Children can’t rear their parents and subdue their passions and lead them on the better path; things might be better if they could,” he thought to himself as he stood before his looking-glass and brushed his hair. He was making himself look spruce, for he had made up his mind to go that same evening and see if he could meet Sestrina wandering by the palace. He had met her several times by appointment, but she had not turned up at the last appointment. “Old Gravelot must be home, laid up with a shot wound in his shoulder, so he’s out of the way,” he thought, and as he reflected he made up his mind to ask Sestrina if she would elope with him and clear out of Hayti.
“I’ll see her to-night if I have to sneak into the palace,” was his mental reflection as he hastily brushed himself down. It wanted about two hours before sunset, and so he began to wander about. Then he strolled out into the street and started to go through the town so that he could take a walk in the country before it was time to go and haunt the palace grounds in an attempt to meet Sestrina.
“Biglow did not exaggerate about the people here being mad over fetishes and possible revolutions,” he thought as the dark-eyed mulatto maids and handsome creole girls and men stared at him as he passed down the street. “Pretty fine state of affairs,” he thought as he began to ponder over future possibilities, what might happen to Sestrina if a revolution did break out in Hayti. Then he eased his troubled mind by recalling de Cripsny’s words when he, Clensy, had asked him about the matter.