the only daughter of the house, appeared, but for the most
time she was away, sailing a fishing boat or looking after the little
farm. To Jeanne she represented a type wholly strange, but altogether
interesting. She was little over twenty years of age, but she was
strong and finely built. She had the black hair and dark brown eyes,
which here and there amongst the villagers of the east coast remind one
of the immigration of worsted spinners and silk weavers from Flanders
and the North of France, many centuries ago. She was very handsome but
exceedingly shy. When Jeanne, as she had done more than once, tried to
talk to her, her abrupt replies gave little opening for conversation.
One morning, however, when Jeanne, having returned from a long tramp
across the sand dunes, was sitting in the little orchard at the back of
the house, she saw her landlady's daughter come slowly out to her from
the house. Jeanne put down her book.

"Good morning, Miss Caynsard!" she said.

"Good morning, miss!" the girl answered awkwardly. "You have had a long
walk!"

Jeanne nodded.

"I went so far," she said, "that I had to race the tide home, or I
should have had to wade through the home creek."

Kate nodded.

"The tide do come sometimes," she said, "at a most awful pace. I have
been out after whelks myself, and had to walk home with the sea all
round me, and nothing but a ribbon of dry land. One needs to know the
ways about on this wilderness."

"One learns them by watching," Jeanne remarked. "I suppose you have
lived here all your life."

"All my life," the girl answered, "and my father and grandfather before
me. 'Tis a queer country, but them as is born and bred here seldom
leaves it. Sometimes they try. They go to the next village inland, or
to some town, or to foreign parts, but sooner or later if they live
they come back."

Jeanne nodded sympathetically.

"It is a wonderful country," she said. "When I saw it first it seemed
to me that it was depressing. Now I love it!"

"And I," the girl remarked, with a sudden passion in her tone, "I hate
it!"

Jeanne looked at her, surprised.

"It sounds so strange to hear you say that," she remarked. "I should
have thought that any one who had lived here always would have loved
it. Every day I am here I seem to discover new beauties, a new effect
of colouring, a new undertone of the sea, or to hear the cry of some
new bird."

"It is beautiful sometimes," the girl answered. "I love