Bayou Folk

"In the days of Lucien Santien and his hundred slaves, it had been very
splendid in the wealth of its thousand acres. But the war did its work, of
course. Then Jules Santien was not the man to mend such damage as the war had
left. His three sons were even less able than he had been to bear the weighty
inheritance of debt that came to them with the dismantled plantation; so it was
a deliverance to all when Harding & Offdean, the New Orleans creditors,
relieved them of the place with the responsibility and indebtedness which its
ownership had entailed.

Hector, the eldest, and Grégoire, the youngest of these Santien boys, had
gone each his way. Placide alone tried to keep a desultory foothold upon the
land which had been his and his forefathers'. But he too was given to wandering
– within a radius, however, which rarely took him so far that he could not reach
the old place in an afternoon of travel, when he felt so inclined."

- Excerpted from "Bayou Folk"