He perceived that there was something in the state of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him particularly discordant.
Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in the Creole patois.

They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant, mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_.

It was a portion of the Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of Barrataria Bay and Bayou.

These four men did not call it by the proper title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles, who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.
Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Americain, in English.
"And why ?" one was demanding.

"Because money is scarce.