“Give way, boys,” cried the mate in a stentorian voice. “Give way.” The crew stretched every muscle, and the yawl skimmed swiftly past the great, flaring obstruction, swinging and swaying as if at anchor in the mouth of the bayou. Now and again anxious, frightened glances were cast astern. But a pursuit by the woodland monster did not materialize.
The aspect of the Duciehurst mansion gave no token of its ruinous condition when first it broke upon the view. Its stately portico, the massive Corinthian columns reaching to the floor of the third story of the main building, impressively dominated the scene, whitely glittering, surrounded by the green leaves of the magnolia grandiflora, ancient now, and of great bulk and height. The house was duplicated by the reflection in water close at hand, whether some lake or merely a pool formed by the rain, Paula could not determine. A wing on either side expressed the large scope of its construction, and from a turn in the road, if a grass-grown track could be so called, came glimpses, in the rear of the building, of spacious galleries both above and below stairs, shut in by Venetian blinds, so much affected in the architecture of Southern homes in former years. A forest of live oak, swamp maple, black gum closed the view of the background, and cut off the place from communication with the cotton lands appurtenant to it, but at a very considerable distance. For the region immediately contiguous to the house had become in the divagations of the great river peculiarly liable to overflow, and thus the forest, known, indeed, as the “open swamp,” continued uncleared, because of the precarious value of the land for agricultural operations. In fact, the main levee that protected the fields now lay far in the rear of the old Duciehurst mansion. Doubtless in times of specially high water seeping rills effected entrance at door and casement and ran along the floors and rose against the walls, and brought as tenants crayfish and frogs, water-snakes and eels, and other slimy denizens of the floods, who explored the strange recesses of this refuge, and, perhaps, made merry, thus translated to the seat of the scornful.
Paula paused on the crest of the old levee. It had been in its day a redoubtable embankment, and despite the neglect of a half century, it still served in partial efficiency, and its trend could be discerned far away. She gazed at the place with emotions it was difficult for her to understand. She could not shake off the consciousness of the presence of Adrian Ducie, nor could she cease to speculate how it must affect him to see his ancestral estate in the possession of the usurper, for thus he must consider her husband. Ducie had grown silent since they had disembarked, and walked a little apart from the cluster of tramping refugees. She dared not look at his face.