another
stone enclosure in which stood stable, granary, cattle-house, and
sheepfold, all of stone, though the roofs of these buildings were
either turfed or thatched. And over them the weather-vane, a golden
Dorado, swam in the sunshine.

One thing I noticed as I crossed the unused moat on a permanent
bridge: the youthful Countess no longer denied herself the services of
servants, for I saw a cloaked shepherd and his two wolf-like and
tailless sheep-dogs watching the flock scattered over the downs; and
there were at least half a dozen farm servants pottering about from
stable to granary, and a toothless porter to answer the gate-bell and
pilot me past the tiny loop-holed lodge-turret to the house. There was
also a man, lying belly down in the bracken, watching me; and as I
walked into the court I tried to remember where I had seen his face
before.

The entire front of the house was covered with those splendid
orange-tinted tea-roses that I had noticed in Paradise; thicket on
thicket of clove-scented pinks choked the flower-beds; and a broad mat
of deep-tinted pansies lay on the lawn, spread out for all the world
like a glorious Eastern rug.

There was a soft whirring in the air like the sound of a humming-bird
close by; it came from a spinning-wheel, and grew louder as a servant
admitted me into the house and guided me to a sunny room facing the
fruit garden.

The spinner at the wheel was singing in an undertone--singing a Breton
"gwerz," centuries old, retained in memory from generation to
generation:

"Woe to the Maids of Paradise,
Yvonne!
Twice have the Saxons landed; twice!
Yvonne!
Yet must Paradise see them thrice!
Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik."

Old as were the words, the melody was older--so old and quaint and
sweet that it seemed a berceuse fashioned to soothe the drowsing
centuries, lest the memories of ancient wrongs awake and rouse the
very dead from their Gothic tombs.

All the sad history of the Breton race was written in every minor
note; all the mystery, the gentleness, the faith of the lost people of
Armorica.

And now the singer was intoning the "Gwerz Ar Baradoz"--the
"Complaint of Paradise"--a slow, thrilling miserere, scarcely
dominating the velvet whir of the spinning-wheel.

Suddenly the melody ceased, and a young Bretonne girl appea