HOW HE DID IT.

Ristofalo and Richling had hardly separated, when it occurred to the latter that the Italian had first touched him from behind. Had Ristofalo recognized him with his back turned, or had he seen him earlier and followed him? The facts were these: about an hour before the time when Richling omitted to apply for employment in the ill-smelling store in Tchoupitoulas street, Mr. Raphael Ristofalo halted in front of the same place,—which appeared small and slovenly among its more pretentious neighbors,—and stepped just inside the door to where stood a single barrel of apples,—a fruit only the earliest varieties of which were beginning to appear in market. These were very small, round, and smooth, and with a rather wan blush confessed to more than one of the senses that they had seen better days. He began to pick them up and throw them down—one, two, three, four, seven, ten; about half of them were entirely sound.

“How many barrel’ like this?”

“No got-a no more; dass all,” said the dealer. He was a Sicilian. “Lame duck,” he added. “OÄl de rest gone.”

“How much?” asked Ristofalo, still handling the fruit.

The Sicilian came to the barrel, looked in, and said, with a gesture of indifference:—

“’M—doll’ an’ ’alf.” Ristofalo offered to take them at a dollar if he might wash and sort them under the dealer’s hydrant, which could be heard running in the back yard. The offer would have been rejected with rude scorn but for one thing: it was spoken in Italian. The man looked at him with pleased surprise, and made the concession. The porter of the store, in a red worsted cap, had drawn near. Ristofalo bade him roll the barrel on its chine to the rear and stand it by the hydrant.

“I will come back pretty soon,” he said, in Italian, and went away.

By and by he returned, bringing with him two swarthy, heavy-set, little Sicilian lads, each with his inevitable basket and some clean rags. A smile and gesture to the store-keeper, a word to the boys, and in a moment the barrel was upturned, and the pair were washing, wiping, and sorting the sound and unsound apples at the hydrant.

Ristofalo stood a moment in the entrance of the store. The question now was where to get a dollar. Richling passed, looked in, seemed to hesitate, went on, turned, and passed again, the other way. Ristofalo saw him all the time and recognized him at once, but appeared not to observe him.

“He will do,” thought the Italian. “Be back few minute’,” he said, glancing behind him.

“Or-r righ’,” said the store-keeper, with a hand-wave of good-natured confidence. He recognized Mr. Raphael Ristofalo’s species.

The Italian walked up across Poydras street, saw Richling stop and look at the machinery, approached, and touched him on the shoulder.

On parting with him he did not return to the store where he had left the apples. He walked up Tchoupitoulas street about a mile, and where St. Thomas street branches acutely from it, in a squalid district full of the poorest Irish, stopped at a dirty fruit-stand and spoke in Spanish to its Catalan proprietor. Half an hour later twenty-five cents had changed hands, the Catalan’s fruit shelves were bright with small pyramids—sound side foremost—of Ristofalo’s second grade of apples, the Sicilian had Richling’s dollar, and the Italian was gone with his boys and his better grade of fruit. Also, a grocer had sold some sugar, and a druggist a little paper of some harmless confectioner’s dye.

Down behind the French market, in a short, obscure street that runs from Ursulines to Barracks street, and is named in honor of Albert Gallatin, are some old buildings of three or four stories’ height, rented, in John Richling’s day, to a class of persons who got their livelihood by sub-letting the rooms, and parts of rooms, to the wretchedest poor of New Orleans,—organ-grinders, chimney-sweeps, professional beggars, street musicians, lemon-peddlers, rag-pickers, with all the yet dirtier herd that live by hook and crook in the streets or under the wharves; a room with a bed and stove, a room without, a half-room with or without ditto, a quarter-room with or without a blanket or quilt, and with only a chalk-mark on the floor instead of a partition. Into one of these went Mr. Raphael Ristofalo, the two boys, and the apples. Whose assistance or indulgence, if any, he secured in there is not recorded; but when, late in the afternoon, the Italian issued thence—the boys, meanwhile, had been coming and going—an unusual luxury had been offered the roustabouts and idlers of the steam-boat landings, and many had bought and eaten freely of the very small, round, shiny, sugary, and artificially crimson roasted apples, with neatly whittled white-pine stems to poise them on as they were lifted to the consumer’s watering teeth. When, the next morning Richling laughed at the story, the Italian drew out two dollars and a half, and began to take from it a dollar.

“But you have last night’s lodging and so forth yet to pay for.”

“No. Made friends with Sicilian luggerman. Slept in his lugger.” He showed his brow and cheeks speckled with mosquito-bites. “Ate little hard-tack and coffee with him this morning. Don’t want much.” He offered the dollar with a quarter added. Richling declined the bonus.

“But why not?”

“Oh, I just couldn’t do it,” laughed Richling; “that’s all.”

“Well,” said the Italian, “lend me that dollar one day more, I return you dollar and half in its place to-morrow.”

The lender had to laugh again. “You can’t find an odd barrel of damaged apples every day.”

“No. No apples to-day. But there’s regiment soldiers at lower landing; whole steam-boat load; going to sail this evenin’ to Florida. They’ll eat whole barrel hard-boil’ eggs.”—And they did. When they sailed, the Italian’s pocket was stuffed with small silver.

Richling received his dollar and fifty cents. As he did so, “I would give, if I had it, a hundred dollars for half your art,” he said, laughing unevenly. He was beaten, surpassed, humbled. Still he said, “Come, don’t you want this again? You needn’t pay me for the use of it.”

But the Italian refused. He had outgrown his patron. A week afterward Richling saw him at the Picayune Tier, superintending the unloading of a small schooner-load of bananas. He had bought the cargo, and was reselling to small fruiterers.

“Make fifty dolla’ to-day,” said the Italian, marking his tally-board with a piece of chalk.

Richling clapped him joyfully on the shoulder, but turned around with inward distress and hurried away. He had not found work.

Events followed of which we have already taken knowledge. Mary, we have seen, fell sick and was taken to the hospital.

“I shall go mad!” Richling would moan, with his dishevelled brows between his hands, and then start to his feet, exclaiming, “I must not! I must not! I must keep my senses!” And so to the commercial regions or to the hospital.

Dr. Sevier, as we know, left word that Richling should call and see him; but when he called, a servant—very curtly, it seemed to him—said the Doctor was not well and didn’t want to see anybody. This was enough for a young man who hadn’t his senses. The more he needed a helping hand the more unreasonably shy he became of those who might help him.

“Will nobody come and find us?” Yet he would not cry “Whoop!” and how, then, was anybody to come?

Mary returned to the house again (ah! what joys there are in the vale of tribulation!), and grew strong,—stronger, she averred, than ever she had been.

“And now you’ll not be cast down, will you?” she said, sliding into her husband’s lap. She was in an uncommonly playful mood.

“Not a bit of it,” said John. “Every dog has his day. I’ll come to the top. You’ll see.”

“Don’t I know that?” she responded, “Look here, now,” she exclaimed, starting to her feet and facing him, “I’ll recommend you to anybody. I’ve got confidence in you!” Richling thought she had never looked quite so pretty as at that moment. He leaped from his chair with a laughing ejaculation, caught and swung her an instant from her feet, and landed her again before she could cry out. If, in retort, she smote him so sturdily that she had to retreat backward to rearrange her shaken coil of hair, it need not go down on the record; such things will happen. The scuffle and suppressed laughter were detected even in Mrs. Riley’s room.

“Ah!” sighed the widow to herself, “wasn’t it Kate Riley that used to get the sweet, haird knocks!” Her grief was mellowing.

Richling went out on the old search, which the advancing summer made more nearly futile each day than the day before.

Stop. What sound was that?

“Richling! Richling!”

Richling, walking in a commercial street, turned. A member of the firm that had last employed him beckoned him to halt.

“What are you doing now, Richling? Still acting deputy assistant city surveyor pro tem.?”

“Yes.”

“Well, see here! Why haven’t you been in the store to see us lately? Did I seem a little preoccupied the last time you called?”

“I”—Richling dropped his eyes with an embarrassed smile—“I was afraid I was in the way—or should be.”

“Well and suppose you were? A man that’s looking for work must put himself in the way. But come with me. I think I may be able to give you a lift.”

“How’s that?” asked Richling, as they started off abreast. “There’s a house around the corner here that will give you some work,—temporary anyhow, and may be permanent.”

So Richling was at work again, hidden away from Dr. Sevier between journal and ledger. His employers asked for references. Richling looked dismayed for a moment, then said, “I’ll bring somebody to recommend me,” went away, and came back with Mary.

“All the recommendation I’ve got,” said he, with timid elation. There was a laugh all round.

“Well, madam, if you say he’s all right, we don’t doubt he is!”