"Just a common French one, Duchesney, Napoleon Duchesney, if you want
to know both ends of it. It was my father's. He was called after the
emperor whom my grandfather knew years ago in France. He and Napoleon
were students together in the military school at Brienne. In the
Revolution they confiscated his lands, and he came out to Louisiana and
never wanted to go back." He splashed to the stone and took up the
bucket.
She stood absorbed in the discovery, her child's mind busy over this
new conception of him as a man whose birth and station had evidently
been so different to the present conditions of his life. When she
spoke her mental attitude was naively displayed.
"Why didn't you tell before?"
He shrugged.
"What was there to tell? The mountain men don't always use their own
names."
The bucket, swayed by the movement, threw a jet of water on her foot.
He moved back from her and said, "I like the Indian name best."
"It is pretty," and in a lower key, as though trying its sound, she
repeated softly, "_L'eau Courante_, Running Water."
"It's something clear and strong, sometimes shallow and then again
deeper than you can guess.
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