atched cottage, standing at the
back of a small farm-yard. There was no other dwelling in sight, and
even the sea was not visible from it. It was sheltered by the steep
slope of a hill rising behind it, and looked upon another slope covered
with gorse-bushes; a very deep and narrow ravine ran down from it to the
hand-breadth of shingle which I had seen from the boat. A more solitary
place I could not have imagined; no sign of human life, or its
neighborhood, betrayed itself; overhead was a vast dome of sky, with a
few white-winged sea-gulls flitting across it, and uttering their low,
wailing cry. The roof of sky and the two round outlines of the little
hills, and the deep, dark ravine, the end of which was unseen, formed
the whole of the view before me.

I felt chilled a little as I followed Tardif down into the dell. He
glanced back, with grave, searching eyes, scanning my face carefully. I
tried to smile, with a very faint, wan smile, I suppose, for the
lightness had fled from my spirits, and my heart was heavy enough, God
knows.

"Will it not do, mam'zelle?" he asked, anxiously, and with his slow,
solemn utterance; "it is not a place that will do for a young lady like
you, is it? I should have counselled you to go on to Jersey, where there
is more life and gayety; it is my home, but for you it will be nothing
but a dull prison."

"No, no!" I answered, as the recollection of the prison I had fled from
flashed across me; "it is a very pretty place and very safe; by-and-by I
shall like it as much as you do, Tardif."

The house was a low, picturesque building, with thick walls of stone and
a thatched roof, which had two little dormer-windows in it; but at the
most sheltered end, farthest from the ravine that led down to the sea,
there had been built a small, square room of brick-work. As we entered
the fold-yard, Tardif pointed this room out to me as mine.

"I built it," he said, softly, "for my poor little wife; I brought the
bricks over from Guernsey in my own boat, and laid nearly every one of
them with my own hands; she died in it, mam'zelle. Please God, you will
be both happy and safe there!"

We stepped directly from the stone causeway of the yard into the
farm-house kitchen--the only sitting-room in the house except my own. It
was exquisitely clean, with that spotless and scrupulous cleanliness
which appears impossible in houses where there are carpets and curtains,
and papered walls. An old woman, very lit