ans, cauliflowers, and "Golden drop" potatoes. She sold, like
other people, her parsnips by the tonneau, her onions by the hundred,
and her beans by the denerel. She did not go herself to market, but
disposed of her crops through the agency of Guilbert Falliot, at the
sign of the Abreveurs of St. Sampson. The register of Falliot bears
evidence that Falliot sold for her, on one occasion, as much as twelve
bushels of rare early potatoes.
The house had been meanly repaired; but sufficiently to make it
habitable. It was only in very bad weather that the rain-drops found
their way through the ceilings of the rooms. The interior consisted of a
ground-floor suite of rooms, and a granary overhead. The ground-floor
was divided into three rooms; two for sleeping, and one for meals. A
ladder connected it with the granary above. The woman attended to the
kitchen and taught the child to read. She did not go to church or
chapel, which, all things considered, led to the conclusion that she
must be French not to go to a place of worship. The circumstance was
grave. In short, the new comers were a puzzle to the neighbourhood.
That the woman was French seemed probable. Volcanoes cast forth stones,
and revolutions men, so families are removed to distant places; human
beings come to pass their lives far from their native homes; groups of
relatives and friends disperse and decay; strange people fall, as it
were, from the clouds--some in Germany, some in England, some in
America. The people of the country view them with surprise and
curiosity. Whence come these strange faces? Yonder mountain, smoking
with revolutionary fires, casts them out. These barren aerolites, these
famished and ruined people, these footballs of destiny, are known as
refugees, emigres, adventurers. If they sojourn among strangers, they
are tolerated; if they depart, there is a feeling of relief. Sometimes
these wanderers are harmless, inoffensive people, strangers--at least,
as regards the women--to the events which have led to their exile,
objects of persecution, helpless and astonished at their fate. They take
root again somewhere as they can. They have done no harm to any one, and
scarcely comprehend the destiny that has befallen them. So thus I have
seen a poor tuft of grass uprooted and carried away by the explosion of
a mine. No great explosion was ever followed by more of such strays than
the first French Revolution.
The strange woman whom the Guernsey folks
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