ATALANTA IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
The time, a December afternoon within the memory of a child of ten; the place, Jackson Square, better known to history as the old Place d'Armes, the centre of all that is most interesting in the French quarter of New Orleans.
The bronze effigy of the hero whose name the square now bears is surrounded by a group of belated rose-bushes full of a sober wintry bloom. Outside of these runs the shell-strewn path, dazzling white, and harsh to tread upon. The flowers are all dead, save the hardy northern roses, but the orange-trees are heavy with their golden fruit. A group of black-skinned children are playing at leap-frog, and their young voices sound cheerfully in the ears of Philip Rondelet as he sits at the window of his modest apartment high up in one of the famous Pontalba buildings. Two sides of the square are flanked by long brick houses of a somewhat imposing character, alike in all particulars to the very monogram of
