It was gray dawn when they reached the edge of the Great Marsh that lay
smothered under a blanket of chill mist.

"It is over there, my nest," muttered Garron, with a jerk of his thumb
indicating the direction in which his hut lay. Again he drew her roughly
to him.

"_Dis donc, toi!_" he demanded brusquely: "how do they call you?" It had
not, until then, occurred to him to ask her name.

"_Eh ben_--Julie," she replied. "It's a _sacre_ little name I never
liked. _Eh, tu sais_," she added slowly--"when I don't like a thing--"
she drew back a little and gazed at him sullenly--"_Eh ben_--I am like
that when I don't like a thing." Her flash of temper pleased him--he had
had enough of the trustful kitten of Villette's.

"Come along," said he gruffly.

"_Dis donc, toi_," she returned without moving. "It is well understood
then about my dress and the shoes?"

"_Mais oui! Bon Dieu!_" replied the peasant irritably. He was hungry and
wanted his soup. He swore at the chill as he led the way across the
marsh while she followed in his tracks, satisfied with his promise of
the dress and shoes. She wanted a blue dress and she had seen the shoes
that pleased her some months before in the grocery at Pont du Sable when
a dog and she had dragged a fisherwoman in her cart for their board and
lodging.

By the time they reached the forks of the stream the rising sun had
melted the blanket of the mist until it lay over the desolate prairie in
thin rifts of rose vapour.

It was thus the miser, Garron, found his mate.

* * * * *

Julie proved to be a fair cook, and the two lived together, at the
beginning, in comparative peace. Although it was not until days after
the _fete_ at Avelot that she managed to hold him to his promise about
the blue dress, he sent her to Pont du Sable for her shoes the day
after their arrival on the marsh--she bought them and they hurt her. The
outcome of this was their first quarrel.

"_Sacre bon Dieu!_" he snarled--"thou art never content!" Then he struck
her with the back of his clenched fist and, womanlike, she went
whimpering to bed. Neither he nor she thought much of the blow. Her mind
was on the shoes that did not fit.

When she was well asleep and snoring, he ran his sinewy arm in the hole
he had made in the double wall--lifted the end of a short, heavy plank,
caught it back against a nail and gripped the packet of bank notes that
lay snug beneath it. Satisfied