ey met the pretty sight of women and
girls at work in the fields. The cottages were thatched, and some were
moss-grown, and all the canton wore the appearance of simple
contentment, virtue, and thrift.

Avranches is a favorite summer resort for English tourists, owing to
the beauty of its situation, its health-giving air, and the ease and
cheapness with which one may live.

The journey from Caen, along the bowery Norman highways, was made in
diligences. The boys seemed to brim over with pleasure at the prospect
of a ride in a diligence.

"There is one place where contentment and happiness may surely be
found," said Tommy Toby, one day.

"Where?" asked Master Lewis.

"On the top of a diligence."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sure."

The next day the Class was overtaken, while travelling in the French
coach, by a pouring rain. Tommy, as usual, was on the seat with the
driver. He became very impatient, saying, every few minutes, "I wish
it would stop raining, I wish--" this, that, and the other thing.

"Tommy," said Master Lewis, from within the coach, "are you _sure_?"

After a time the sunlight overspread the landscape, making the watery
leaves shine like the multitudinous wavelets of the sea.

Tommy's merry voice was heard again, talking bad French.

"Contentment and happiness," said Master Lewis to Frank, "have
evidently returned again."

From Avranches the Class visited that wonderful castle, church, and
village of the sea, Mont St. Michel.

The journey from the mainland was by a tramway across the Greve, or
sands, at low tide. At neap tides the Mount is not surrounded by water
at any time, but at spring tides it is washed by the sea twice a day,
and sometimes seems like a partly sunken hill in the sea. The fortress
is girt about the base with feudal walls and towers colored by the
sea; above these rises a little town, the houses being set on broken
ledges of rock; above the town stand the fortifications, and a church
and its tower crown all. It is one of the most curious places in the
world.

Pagan priests here worshipped the god of high places; monks succeeded
them; Henry II held court here, then it became a place to which saints
made yearly pilgrimages. The Revolution drove out the monks, and
turned it into a prison. In an iron cage called the Cage of St.
Michel, a torturous contrivance, state prisoners used to be confined.

The Class next went to St. Malo, by the way of Dol; a breezy journey,
with