_, purple
and gold with the low heather and furze which covered them, unsheltered
by any tree, except where crossed in even lines by pollard oaks of
immense age, their great round heads so thick with leaves that a man
might well hide in them. These _truisses_, cut every few years, were
the peasants' store of firewood. Their long processions gave a curious
look of human life to the lonely moor, only inhabited by game, of which
Angelot saw plenty. But he did not shoot, his game-bag being already
stuffed with birds, but marched along with gun on shoulder and dog at
heel over the yellow sandy track, loudly whistling a country tune. There
was not a lighter heart than Angelot's in all his native province, nor a
handsomer face. He only wanted height to be a splendid fellow. His
daring mouth and chin seemed to contradict the lazy softness of his dark
eyes. With a clear, brown skin and straight figure, and dressed in brown
linen and heavy shooting boots, he was the picture of a healthy
sportsman.

A walk of a mile or two across the _landes_ brought him into a green
lane with tall wild hedges, full of enormous blackberries, behind which
were the vineyards, rather weedy as to soil, but loaded with the small
black and white grapes which made the good pure wine of the country.

Angelot turned in and looked at the grapes and ate a few; this was one
of his father's vineyards. The yellow grapes tasted of sunshine and the
south. Angelot went on eating them all the way down the lane; he was
thirsty, in spite of Joubard's sparkling wine, after tramping with dog
and gun since six o'clock in the morning. The green lane led to another,
very steep, rough, and stony. Corners of red and white rock stood out
in it; such a surface would have jolted a strong cart to pieces, but Les
Chouettes had no better approach on this side.

"I want no fine ladies to visit me," Monsieur Joseph would say, with his
sweet smile. "My friends will travel over any road."

Down plunged the lane, with a thick low wood on one side and a sloping
stubble field edged by woods on the other; here again stood a row of old
pollard oaks, like giant guards of the solitude. Then the deep barking
of many dogs, Monsieur Joseph's real protectors, and a group of Spanish
chestnuts sending their branches over the road, announced the strange
hermitage that its master called by the fanciful name of Les Chouettes.
There had indeed been a time, not long before, when owls had been its