in that country are, of rough-hewn
stones. It is a poor, rude place to-day, but it wore an aspect still
more rude and primitive a hundred years ago--on an August day in the
year 1793, when a man issued from the low doorway, and, shading his eyes
from the noonday sun, gazed long and fixedly in the direction of a
narrow rift which a few score paces away breaks the monotony of the
upland level. The man was tall and thin and unkempt, and his features,
which expressed a mixture of cunning and simplicity, matched his figure.
He gazed a while in silence, but at length he uttered a grunt of
satisfaction as the figure of a woman rose gradually into sight. She
came slowly towards him in a stooping posture, dragging behind her a
great load of straw, which completely hid the little sledge on which it
rested, and which was attached to her waist by a rope of twisted hay.

The figure of a woman--rather of a girl. As she drew nearer it could be
seen that her cheeks, though brown and sunburned, were as smooth as a
child's. She seemed to be still in her teens. Her head was bare, and her
short petticoats, of some coarse stuff, left visible bare feet thrust
into wooden shoes. She advanced with her head bent, and her shoulders
strained forward, her face dull and patient. Once, and once only, when
the man's eyes left her for a moment, she shot at him a look of scared
apprehension; and later, when she came abreast of him, her breath coming
and going with her exertions, he might have seen, had he looked closely,
that her strong brown limbs were trembling under her.

But the man noticed nothing in his impatience, and only chid her for her
slowness. "Where have you been dawdling, lazy-bones?" he cried.

She murmured, without halting, that the sun was hot.

"Sun hot!" he retorted. "Jeanne is lazy, that is it! _Mon Dieu_, that I
should have married a wife who is tired by noon! I had better have left
you to that never-do-well Pierre Bounat. But I have news for you, my
girl."

He lounged after her as he spoke, his low cunning face--the face of the
worst kind of French peasant--flickering with cruel pleasure, as he saw
how she winced at the name he had mentioned. She made him no answer,
however. Instead, she drew her load with increased vehemence towards one
of the two doors which led into the building. "Well, well, I will tell
you presently," he called after her. "Be quick and come to dinner."

He entered himself by the other door. The house wa