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"All this I learned by rote as you can tell

"One spring day several years after Manfred had becoht to the property, and the slow process of building the an

"Nothing but the finest kiln-dried cypress was seen to go off by pirogue into the swareat quantity of other reat amount of coal, and only worko 'ahen the as done, which is what those work a word as to the location of the island, or what had been their specific tasks

"Was there really such an island? Was there really a her up, as to say that it was anything end? And as there no swamp tour to take our tourists out to search for this ar Devil Island, for surely everyone wanted to see it It was a regular feature of life to see the tourists down at the landing, hankering to wade in the bog But the swah, is almost impassable

"The great silent groping cypress is everywhere, along with the wild palmetto and the rankest water And one can still hear the roar of cougars and bears It's no joke

"Of course Pops and I fished in Sugar Devil Swanorance I once killed a deer in the swa as I watched it die

"But in all our exploits, including trapping crawfish by the pound, we never went deeper in than some twenty feet from the shores And even at that distance, it's hard to see one's way back

"As for the legend of the Herar Devil Island, Pops put no stock in it, re had existed, it o sunk into the muck

"Then there are the stories of poachers who disappeared without a trace, of their wives gone crying to the local sheriff to please search, but what could the sheriff hope to find in a swaators?

"However, the le was the disappearance into the swamp of Mad Manfred himself in the year 1924, as Aunt Queen has already described to us, to which our tour guides would invariably add that the Old Man dressed in his tailcoat and white tie and boiled shirt and fine leather shoes before that last excursion, and ranted and raved at hi out the door

"Yes, people searched, as the Old Man had been convalescent for two years before this bizarre and desperate flight, but they never found any island, and they had to shoot ators to sell for their hides, but not with Manfred

"And so it was that the idea took hold that there was no real island And that the Old Man had si misery, for he was surely at death's door when he bolted for the pirogue and headed out as if to cross the River Styx

"Then, some seven years later, when his as finally opened, there was found contained within the strong exhortation that no Blackwood or anyone belonging to the Blackwood household was ever to fish or hunt beyond the ar Devil Swaar Devil Island was a danger not only to flesh and blood but to a being's immortal soul

"A very good copy of these pages of Manfred's Last Will and Testament, all notarized in the year 1900, is fra room wall Guests adored it I rehter when they read it And it did certainly see up, that the lawyer, the notary and Mad Manfred were all poets in Byronic cahoots with one another when they wrote this

"But it doesn't seem that way to me now